3961 AäVDNVr 3 1 INONN3 W An Illustrated Quarterly Published by Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas

EDITOR Cornelius Krahn ASSOCIATE EDITORS John F. Schmidt, Walter Klaassen DESIGN CONSULTANT Robert Regier

DEPARTMENT EDITORS Faith and Life Walter Klaassen, Chairman Henry Poettcker (Bible) Leland Harder (Church) Russell Mast (Worship) Heinold Fast (Theology) John Howard Yoder (Theology) Orlando Waltner (Missions) Esko Loewen (Service) Social and Economic Life J. Winfield Fretz, Chairman J. Howard Kauffman (Family) Calvin Redekop (Community) Eldon Gräber (Education) Howard Raid (Agriculture) John Sawatzky (Industry) Paul Peachey (Sociology) Jacob Loewen (Anthropology) Fine Arts Paul Friesen, Co-chairman Elaine Rich, Co-chairman Mary Eleanor Bender (Literature) Warren Kliewcr (Drama) Walter Jost (Music) Robert Regier (Art) History and Folklife Melvin Gingerich, Co-chairman John F. Schmidt, Co-chairman Irvin B. Horst (History) N. van der Zijpp (History) Delbert Griitz (Genealogy) Gerhard Wiens (Folklore) Mary Emma Showalter Eby (Foods) ADMINISTRATION Vernon Neufeld, President Albert J. Meyer, Dean E. J. Miller, Director of Development Hartzel W. Schmidt, Controller MENNONITE

January 1%2 Volume XVII Num ber 1

CONTRIBUTORS Needed: A Mennonite Philosophy of Higher Education 3 ALBERT MEYER, dean of Bethel College, By Albert Meyer spoke at the Bethel College faculty retreat, 1961. RUSSELL MAST, pastor of the Bethel College The Christian Scholar 5 Church, spoke on "The Christian Scholar" in By Russell Mast a Bethel College chapel service. VERNON NEUFELD, president of Bethel College, lead this paper at the opening of the school year, 1961. Christian Faith and Liberal Education 7 By V er non Neufeld ARNOLD NICKEL, vice-chairman of the Board of Directors, read this paper at the Bethel College faculty retreat, 1961. The Anabaptist Concept of the Church and Education 12 ED. G. KAUFMAN, president emeritus, pre­ sented this paper at the annual Founders Day By Art told Nickel of Bethel College. BERNEIL MUELLER, senior at Bethel Col­ lege, wrote the "Inventory" as a class assign­ Pioneers in Mennonite Education 16 ment. By Ed. G. Kaufman C. J. DYCK, director of Institute of Men- nonite Studies, presented this paper at Men- nonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana. I Take a Religious Inventory 20 MAURICE A. MOOK is professor of an­ By Berneil Mueller thropology at the Pennsylvania State University. (See Mennonite Life, July, 1961). AARON MARTIN wrote the article "Court­ The Role of Preaching in Anabaptist Tradition 21 ship and Marriage Practices of Lancaster Mennonites” while at Bethel College. By C. /. Dyck MRS. PAUL BENDER, dean of women at Hess ton College, spent two years with her husband in M.C.C. work in The Netherlands. A Modern Psalm 26 WARREN KLIEWER, professor of English By Elmer E. Suderman at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, is the author of many poems, plays, and short stories. The Nebraska Amish of Pennsylvania 27 ELMER E. SUDERMAN is professor of Eng­ By Alan rice A. Alook lish at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota.

COVER The Amish Buggy Horse 30 "Joy of Youth” (detail), wood block by By Warren Kliewer Franz Neundlinger, from the Gift of Gratitude by the German People to the Mennonite Cen­ tral Committee. Courtship and Marriage Practices of Lancaster Mennonites 31 By Aaron Aiartin MENNONITE LIFE is an illustrated quar­ terly magazine published in January, April, July, and October by Bethel College, North The Golden Knight 36 Newton, Kansas. Second-class postage paid at North Newton, Kansas. By Airs. Paul Bender SUBSCRIPTION RATES: One year, $3.00; Three years, $7.50; Five years, $12.50. Single issues, 75 cents. Books in Review Ay IN THIS This issue is largely devoted to education. Among the articles are messages by Vernon Neufeld, Albert Meyer, Russell Mast, Arnold Nickel, and Ed. G. Kaufman delivered at the school opening, at a faculty retreat, as chapel meditations, and at other college occasions. The remaining contri­ butions are primarily in the realm of literary and poetic efforts and a description of cultural aspects of some Lan­ caster Mennonites and the Nebraska Amish of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania.

By Albert f. /Meyer

M artin Buber c a lls teaching "letting a selection of the To turn specifically to the role of education, teachers world affect a person through the medium of another could help young people prepare themselves to contrib­ person.” In education, the teacher and those he repre­ ute to and participate in all necessary facets of the life sents transmit a selection of the experiences and insights of the community, including those facets sometimes re­ they have found valuable in their generation to the next. ferred to as secular. If men could be called by their They are expressing the hope that the basic human needs fellows and by God to contribute to the life of the com­ for clothing, food, and shelter, and, for Christians, for munity in the areas of business or sculpture, and if their a spiritual heritage, may be met at least as well in the contributions would be just as necessary for the well­ students’ generation as in their own. Rather than to being of the community as those of pastors and theolo­ transmit to their heirs only certain goods and means of gians, certainly some community members could devote production, they seek to make their successors independent themselves to preparing young people for work in busi­ in their own right—able to think for themselves, to ex­ ness or in the plastic arts. press their thoughts and feelings, and to live in individual and collective response of God’s initiative and leading. The Minority Concept of the Church Seen in this light, teaching is an expression of love and If this were ail there were to it, the development of concern for the new generation. For good reason, Chris­ an educational strategy would be relatively simple: we tians in general, and Mennonites in particular, have been would merely focus our attention on Mennonite com­ and are interested in education. munities and their requirements and seek to preserve them and provide for more of them by training some Tbeologica! Commitments of their citizens and the specialists they need. But here This may serve as the beginning of a statement on the a second Mennonite theological understanding enters philosophy of education. Recognizing the function of the picture. Mennonites have always believed that they education in this general way, we still must ask how the were not alone in society—in fact, they have believed task is to be conducted. To speak of higher education that committed Christians have always been in a minori­ specifically, what are the philosophical or theological com­ ty. Moreover, especially in the early days of the move­ mitments that should guide the operation and develop­ ment, Anabaptist-Mennonites have believed they have ment of Mennonite colleges? had extremely important responsibilities to fulfill in the Discussions on this subject in the past have, in gen­ larger society. eral, emphasized primarily the fact that there is no nec­ Anabaptist-Mennonites do not start by just asking essary separation of sacred from secular areas of life. what jobs would be good or necessary in a society— Jesus did God's will even though he lived in the midst their own or another—and then proceeding to appor­ of the dilemmas that are the lot of men. He spoke of tion these jobs among themselves. Instead they begin the Kingdom. He implied that it was the fault of men by asking what others are already doing. They ask —not of God—if men did not live together in an orderly what their little minority can best do with the money way in the world God had created. It was on the foun­ and persons at its disposal. They develop a series of dation of these ideas that the Mennonite community priorities and try to do those things that most need to be concept, the concept of a Christian sub-society in which done in the particular situation in which they find them­ the work and participation of each member was signifi­ selves, leaving many good activities in the hands of non- cant, took shape. All really necessary tasks could be Christians who happen to be interested in them. It practiced by members of the community in good con­ may be that the tasks undertaken by the Mennonites will science and as an expression of Christian love for the have a particularly "spiritual” emphasis. On the other other members of the community. Tasks that could not hand, they may focus their attention on the industriali­ be so practiced were not viewed as necessary. zation of underdeveloped countries or on helping stu-

JANUARY, 1962 3- dents learn to express themselves clearly. In any case, baptism, Mennonites speak of an "age of accountability,” they will not be unduly concerned if the tasks they choose, a time, usually in their teens, when young people decide viewed as a group, appear to be quite lopsided. They responsibly to associate themselves more closely with are not pretending to run the whole society, and there Christ and Christians or not to do so. Although this may be many good tasks they will have to leave, for in itself is by no means a peculiarly Mennonite concept, lack of time, to others. Mennonites historically have emphasized the importance This thinking raises many questions. How docs the of free choice at the age of responsibility more than most increase in the state’s support of higher education, a fact other Christians. They believe that exerting social pres­ of the last 150 years and particularly of the last 50 years, sure on a young person to make him live as though he influence the church’s educational strategy? Are there wanted to be a Christian when he does not can have areas in which the church should lead in educational ex­ harmful effects. On the other hand, they believe that perimentation at the present time? Are there specific young people who want to be Christians can mature disciplines in which a Christian approach is quite dif­ only as they begin to engage in activity and witness on ferent from a non-Christian approach, and should Chris­ the basis of their faith. Overprotection beyond the age tian institutions concentrate especially on these? Men- of responsibility can prevent maturation and healthy spir­ nonites would say that these and other questions must itual growth. be raised if Mennonites are to maintain a pioneering Naturally the increase in opportunities for decision stance with respect to the larger society. will mean that some people will decide not to accept the norms of the community. That is exactly what many Interpersonal Relation ships Christian groups have been telling the Mennonites and There are still other Mennonite theological commit­ other free churches since the Reformation. In fact, the ments that would have important implications for higher Mennonites themselves have lost some of their adven­ education. To cite a third example, one of the most turous spirit in this regard in the course of the centuries. distinctive characteristics of the Anabaptist-Mennonites Leaders in many denominations are currently beginning has been a concept of the church in which the mutual to examine critically some of the premises of the Con- responsibilities of members were emphasized. The stantinian alternative, however. When Christians are church is not only the chief locus of preaching and the increasingly becoming members of a minority in the administration of the sacraments; it is also the place where world population, their tendency to use majority pres­ members know and respond to one another. The values sures and tactics may well be re-examined. In any case, of a congregation are not only certain beliefs transmitted outside influences and the increasing interest of Menno­ from generation to generation or discovered as entities nites in their heritage are leading to new studies on the that would have had a previously disincarnate existence; attitudes of Mennonites toward their young people. May they are arrived at and formulated in specific situations these factors also lead to studies on the implications of through a process of intensive research and conversation. these findings for higher education. These beliefs would seem to imply that the communi­ More needs to be done. Most of what Mennonites cation of values to a student in the classroom, in coun­ have written on their philosophy of higher education selling, or in extracurricular activities might likewise in­ in the past has dealt primarily with the possibility of volve his own active participation in the process of their the Mennonite community and the importance of its discovery and formulation, and that the interpersonal transmission. Very little has been written on (1) the relationships within the academic community might also relevance of the pioneering stance of the church vis-a-vis be very important. One college president states the the larger society, (2) the relevance of the Mennonite point in these words: concept of the church for the structure and inner life The only justification of a church college lies in its ef­ of the college community, and (3) the relevance of the fort to be a Christian community . . . It is out of some such age-of-responsibility concept for higher education. sense that Professor Clarke, of Earlham, said that a church Maybe we must continue for a few years with educa­ '■ollcge does not "have a religious program. It is a re­ tional structures and objectives borrowed for the most- ligious program.” (Howard F. Lowry, "The Christian part from other Protestant groups—and let us by all College as a Christian Community,” The Christian Scholar means recognize the degree to which we agree with other XXXVII Supplement [Autumn, 1954,] p. 220.) Christians and gratefully acknowledge the contributions If this is true, it will certainly influence the way in which they have made and are making to our Christian under­ college faculty members view their work and undertake standings— with distinctive Mennonite emphases ex­ their tasks. Indeed, it can influence the structure of the pressed primarily verbally in classroom lectures and chap­ college in which they teach. el talks. Let us still hope for the day when the Holy Spirit will break forth in power and the very structures Young Christians and Commitment and fundamental objectives of our institutions will be Mennonites have an attitude toward young people not shaped into forms that reflect more adequately our best shared by all Christians. Instead of practicing infant Christian insights.

4 MENNONITE LIFE THE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR

By Russell L. Mast

T here is a periodical which comes to the Bethel Col­ lege Library which is called, The Christum Scholar. I would like to advance the proposition that the purpose of Bethel College or any church-related college is to train Christian scholars and that the purpose for your being here is to become Christian scholars. It should not be necessary to labor the point but, lest there be any un­ certainty, let me say emphatically, at the outset, that one cannot be a Christian scholar unless one is a Christian, and that if you are to become better scholars you must become better Christians. For I am one of those who believes that true Christianity and true scholarship do not and never have stood in opposition to each other. I be­ lieve, moreover that among those who are actively en­ gaged in higher education, either as teachers or as stu­ dents, those who are Christians have more and not less reason to be true scholars than those who are not Chris­ tians. This is not to say that every Christian should necessarily be a scholar or a college student but that among those who have committed themselves to higher educa­ tion true Christianity is an aid rather than a hindrance to true scholarship. Unfortunately, this is not the position which the church has uniformly taken. I must confess that men in my profession have often been led to say to students, "Well after all, Christian character is more important than great scholarship. We are more interested in the kind of a life that a person lives than in the kind of mind he has." So we go on making the assumption that in a Christian col­ lege we make up in piety what we lack in intellectual vig­ or. Perhaps you have heard of the remark made to the late Henry Sloan Coffin on Sunday morning as he stood at the door after the morning service. It was a lady who said, "Pastor, you don’t know how much your sermons mean to my husband since he has lost his mind.” I am sure that remark was not meant the way it sound­ ed. But its sound does have a familiar ring to it. It does seem to imply that to have more religion you will be better off with less intelligence, and the corollary: that to have more intelligence you will be better off to have less religion. So we may need to choose what we want most of all. But I refuse absolutely to be manuvered into the position where I must make that kind of choice. I will not say that we must have less of the one in order to have more of the other. What I do say is this: that being a true Christian helps at many points in being a true scholar; that there are many values actively urged in

JANUARY, 1962 5 the Christian understanding of life that are of inestimable But if you have made the first hurdle already and you value in becoming scholars in the truest and deepest sense have mastered the discipline of sustained concentration, of the word. What are some of these qualities which a it will not be hard for you to see that painstaking thorough­ true scholar will demonstrate in his life and which are ness is another quality of the true Christian scholar. inescapably a part of our Christian heritage? For then you will strive for the most complete mastery that you can achieve. You will not be content with a half- Su stained Concentration done job. Nor will you allow yourself merely to get by and nothing more. In all of this, accuracy is more William E. Gladstone, a great British statesman, when important than speed and thoroughness is more import­ asked how he came to occupy the position he had as a ant than volume. So effort extends down to the small­ political leader, replied with one word, "concentration.” est detail. When Michelangelo risked his life to paint Concentration is the capacity to set all one’s attention and an unimportant part of an angel on a high ceiling of a energy to a given task at a given moment of time. It is church, a friend chided him. But the artist replied, to refuse to be sidetracked by any other claims whether "Trifles make perfection—and perfection is no trifle.” trivial, worthless, or definitely harmful and to commit Christianity makes a virtue out of thoroughness. In oneself without reservation to the matter at hand. Now meeting all of life’s obligations Jesus insisted on doing it must be said at once, whether in the college community more than was required. "If a man asks you to go one or out of it, concentration is not easy to acheive. We live mile go with him two.” Or, he said, "He that is faithful in a time where there are so many distracting claims and in a little is faithful also in much. And he that is unfaith­ far more demands on our energies than we can ever pos­ ful in little is unfaithful also in much.” What can be sibly attend to. But the sober fact that cannot be gainsaid clearer than this? Because one is a true Christian he will is this: that the way of true scholarship lies in the con­ also be a true scholar. centration of our personal resources and not in their diffusion. It lies in an unqualified commitment to the Unfailing Integrity matter at hand. The great scholars are those who have mastered the hard discipline of concentration. All of what we have said so far implies that we have acquired an unqualified loyalty to the truth. For a But concentration is a Christian virtue. Everywhere in scholar has devoted himself to a search for truth. He the New Testament there is a call to live concentrated, believes that what is ultimately true is ultimately real focused, committed lives. Jesus once said to Martha and what is ultimately real is ultimately true. For truth who was careful and troubled about many things, "One is that which corresponds with reality, with the way thing is needful.” And Paul said at one place, "This one things are. A scholar believes further that truth can thing I do.” The scholar who sets himself to the task of stand on its own feet and that it needs no defense. It study, for instance, can say to himself, "This one thing needs only to be understood and proclaimed. A gen­ I do” ; and, "One thing is needful.” But if he is a Chris­ uine scholar can never go contrary to what he knows or tion scholar, he will already have mastered to a large ex­ believes to be true. There will be times when truth tent the disciplines of commitment which his faith has is unpopular, when we will be tempted to compromise taught him. with it, and in our day even to suffer for it. But as I had occasion to say in another connection, "No one Painstaking Tboronghness is so strong as he who has truth on his side.” "If there be a God, the truth of all the world is His Several years ago John Brower, an advertising man, re­ truth, and religion is not a fragment or phase of the ferred to our time as "the great era of the goof-off, the educational processs, but its permeating factor and its age of the half-done job. The land from coast to coast inner unity.”- All the more because he is a Christian de­ has been enjoying a stampede away from responsibility. voted to the God of truth will he exemplify unfailing It is populated with laundry men who won’t iron shirts, integrity to the truth at every level of life, whether it with waiters who won’t serve, with carpenters who will be factual truth or ultimate truth. come around some day maybe, with executives whose mind is on the golf course, with teachers who demand a single salary schedule, so that achievement cannot be Creative Reflection rewarded, nor poor work punished, with students who This presumes a thorough knowledge of factual truth. take cinch courses because the hard ones make them think, It presumes the hard work and discipline of mastering with spiritual delinquents of all kinds who have been certain fundamentals of knowledge. There is no short triumphantly determined to enjoy what is known until cut around this process and there is no way in which the present crisis as 'the new leisure’. ” 1 With gold-brick­ this can be done without serious effort. This is a part ing all around us, with irresponsibility and an excessive of the thoroughness about which we were talking a mo­ desire for sheer idleness, it is not hard to see why scholar­ ment ago. But there is a kind of scholarship that goes ship is having such a time of it in our colleges. no farther than this. It stops short of relating all this

6 MENNONITE LIFE detailed information into an integrated view of life. ye cannot bear them now. I-Iowbeit when he, the spirit When facts are gained in one field they should be related of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” The to facts gained in another field. Some old ideas must spirit of truth is no substitute for hard thinking. The be discarded so that new ideas may be born. Always spirit of truth is your guide in hard thinking, as you make there must be a growing edge to our thinking. If you use of the factual information which you have gained have come to college with no intention of gaining new for creative reflection. So the Christian scholar is one ideas, then you have come to the wrong place. If you who has, among others, such qualities as sustained con­ have come and now make no provision for creative re­ centration, painstaking thoroughness, unfailing integri­ flection on the factual truth that you have gained, then ty, and creative reflection. Society as a whole, no less your education will have been a colossal failure. than the church, has great need for those who are in But creative reflection is most emphatically a Christian the truest sense Christian scholars. virtue. The fact that our understanding of truth must have a growing edge is nowhere more clearly stated ’Quoted in Life magazine, July 7, 1958. than when, at the close of his ministry, Jesus said to his -Howard Lowry: The Mind's Adventure, Westminster Press, disciples, ''I have yet many things to say to you, but p. 104

Christian Faith and Liberal Education

By Vernon . N eufeld

N o t a l l is rig h t between education in general and the much thought, deliberation, conversation. What is said Christian faith. The relationship between the church is but a beginning of such a consideration; it is not in and liberal education in many respects may be charac­ any sense a concluding statement of final results. terized as an uneasy truce of peace between two tradi­ tional enemies. Mutual glances of suspicion are cast from Origin and Nature of Liberal Education the church to higher education as well as from the world In recorded history, so-called "liberal” education ap­ of learning to that of the Christian faith. The admin­ parently originated in ancient Greece. This means, of istrator of a church-related college occasionally hears, on course, that the concept of liberal education began prior the one hand, that his faculty is too liberal and open- to and thus independently of Christianity. The word minded and thus a means to the destruction of the Chris­ liberal as it refers to education in origin distinguished tian faith, but on the other hand, that the college is the freedman {liber) from the slave. Slaves, like all sectarian and narrow in its instruction and thus dwarfs chattel or domesticated animals, were trained and disci­ the development and maturation of her young people. plined for specific ends—that of service to their masters The question of how liberal education should relate or owners. Freedmen, however, were educated for their to the Christian faith is not simple to answer. And per­ own good; they themselves, not a specific job or service, haps, since this is a question which has existed and has were the end toward which their education pointed. been debated almost since the beginning of Christianity As conceived by the Greeks, liberal education contained —without permanent resolution—one should not be un­ rather significant elements. For one thing, education duly depressed that it confronts us now and that its was related to the state. An educated man is a good clear and final solution continues to elude us. man, and a good man is a good citizen. Plato said, "If Yet, an attempt must be made. What follows is such you ask what is the good of education, the answer is an attempt—an attempt to discuss the nature of the prob­ simple—that education makes good men, that good men lem as it appears to exist, and to suggest some presuppo­ act noble, and conquer their enemies in battle because sitions which possibly could lead to an answer. It would they are good.” Furthermore, education was for the appear that there exists at least the possibility of bringing leisure and free class. The highest life was one of cul­ together into dynamic relationship the Christian faith tured leisure; energies were expended in the pursuit of and liberal education. This is a subject which requires knowledge for its own sake. Related to this was the

JANUARY, 1962 7 idea, already expressed, that man was an end in himself. Aristotle noted that even liberal arts can become servile if done for the sake of others. Man must be considered as an end, not as a means to be used by other men. Liberal education, to use the summary of E. Harris Harbison, . . is secular, deep rooted in this-worldly concerns and aims. It is aristocratic, redolent of the ideals and standards of the ruling class. It is uncom­ mitted to anything beyond an amorphous humanism as an explanation of the meaning of existence.”'-

Christian Attitude Toward Liberal Education No doubt it is the identification of liberal education with culture in general (that is, secularism), its objective in man himself (that is, humanism), its aristocratic spirit, its purpose within the context of the state, which brought suspicion upon it in early Christianity. There are those, of course, like Clement and Origen of Alexandria (during the latter second and early third centuries), who attempted a synthesis of Christianity and the Greek heritage. To them Christianity was the cul­ mination of philosophy. Liberal culture and education was the way to discover true Christianity, for this makes possible the intellectual understanding of the mysteries of the faith. But generally there was deeper suspicion of education. TertuIIian was exceedingly wary of pagan culture and learning, and denied that Christianity had anything to icarn from classical culture. He did, however, see the necessity of employing it in his own educational expe­ rience. The early Roman Christians, not having their own schools, would only reluctantly send their children to the secular schools. Augustine and Jerome said that literary and rhetorical culture was good only so long as it was kept subservient to the Christian life. During the early Middle Ages, secular learning con­ St. Benedict and the Barbarians. From the mural painting tinued the Greek heritage with the seven liberal arts of by Edward Lining. Courtesy oj New York Public Library. The grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, and as­ monk is copying manuscripts, while in the distance the barbarians tronomy. Separate and distinct from the liberal arts was are burning the land. Christian education and the Christian wit­ ness must go on even in the atomic age with its threats oj dis­ dogmatic instruction in the Scriptures, the church fathers, aster. and the church doctrines. The two realms remained separate. It was in scholasticism of the twelfth and thir­ chief marriage of (he church and education in medieval teenth centuries that secular learning and the Christian scholasticism endec! in divorce, each again going separate faith were briefly brought together. Abelard, for ex­ ways. ample, investigated the fundamental doctrines of the church and brought everything under the scope of rea­ Separation of Church and State son, and, in essence, theology was brought under the One other phenomenon must be mentioned in this sway of philosophy. Thomas Aquinas accepted the es­ brief historical review. This is the present emphasis upon sential dogmas of the church as unquestionable, and sys­ the separation of church and state, particularly in the tematized all in a form derived from Aristotle. The United States, and how this relates to education. founding of universities in Europe, which initially re­ The state during the nineteenth and twentieth centu­ sulted from the influence of scholasticism, inevitably in­ ries exercised its right to demand minimum knowledge creased an emphasis on freedom of thought and this, in of its citizens, with the intention of benefiting both in­ turn, led to the great Renaissance with its opposition to dividual and state. Man was free to direct his life apart authority and the assertion of individual liberty. The from theological considerations and religious sectarian-

MENNONiTE LIFE ism. It was assumed that rationalism excluded religion; The Secular Approach Descartes had advocated that man must prove everything At the other extreme, in approaching the problem of by reason and that he can accept nothing which fails to the separation of Christianity from education, is what stand the test. The Christian faith had no place in secu­ one might call the secular position. Here the college lar education. pursues purely academic matters, and forgets about the The church, on the other hand, through the several church and Christianity in general. It emphasizes free­ denominations, was intent on maintaining sectarian be­ dom of individual thought and action, and religion and liefs and practices, and in this spirit insisted on extrud­ morality, when they are considered, are viewed with ing the last ounce of Christianity from secular education. complete detachment and objectivity. Christianity and Thus the rift between the church and liberal educa­ the church are looked upon suspiciously as being sub­ tion was not alleviated; if anything, it was widened. jective, emotional, and traditional, and thus outside the In this tradition we stand. We implicitly, if not ex­ rc-alm of a liberal education. plicitly, believe that it is for the state to educate the child and young person in the three R’s, in the sciences, in the Perhaps most colleges tend in this direction, for the arts and skills of aesthetic and physical education; in rational approach makes good sense and conforms to our short, the state is concerned with the mind and body. accepted pattern of thought. But to reduce everything It is the task of the church, however, to save the soul to objectivity, to the rational, is to neglect the realm of and to nourish it in spiritual matters. The gulf remains. the spirit, of faith, of the divine. To attempt to prove Education is generally viewed as being secular, from everything by logic is also to fail—even in the liberal kindergarten to university. It is the task of the state to arts and sciences, let alone the Christian faith. educate the person for society, and jealous care is given Church-related colleges, their constituencies, faculty, to keep religion out of the schools, for religion is in a and students, then, in varying degrees tend to throw class by itself. It is the job of the church. themselves into one or the other extreme. Perhaps even worse, the attempt is sometimes made to accept both al­ A Radical Approach ternatives: to be a sectarian liberal institution!—somehow At one extreme end of possible views is the sectarian to promote and maintain traditional teachings, emphases position. This approach to education is aimed primarily taught in the church, and yet to teach objectively the at self-preservation and self-propagation. It teaches the liberal arts and sciences as done elsewhere in the aca­ accepted dogmas of its own group as unquestioned truth, demic world. But here the gap between the Christian and adopts the method of the catechetical schools with faith and liberal education is not really bridged. its developed and final answers, to be memorized, assumed without question, and passed on without change to the A Third Alternative: Christian Liberal Education next person or the next generation. As might be assumed by now, there ought to be a There is concern in this type of school to purge from third alternative which avoids the pitfalls of extremity the instruction and curriculum those subjects and topics presented here. The gulf between the Christian faith which apparently do violence to the accepted church dog­ and liberal education can be spanned, and the church- mas and practices, and in a real or figurative sense to related college is in a position to do just this. There is keep under lock and key the forbidden book. Such a such a thing as Christian liberal education which violates school can actually instruct the mind to be closed to new neither the essence of the Christian faith nor the essence and discomforting ideas. If an A.B. or B.S. degree is of liberal education. necessary for a determined end, well and good; but in Christ and the Christian faith is the beginning point taking, for example, biology or philosophy, only go in considering such a relationship. We speak here of through the motions, meet the requirements, pass the Jesus Christ, the one who lived in history as the incar­ courses, but do not be influenced by what you read or nate Son of God, who lived and died and was raised hear. for man. We are talking about the reigning Christ, who Clearly, this approach is apologetic and defensive. Its is Lord of all—Lord of man, Lord of the earth, Lord presuppositions rest upon certain preconceived ideas and of the universe, Lord of history. All truth—whether in its purposes are intimately related to the preservation of the realm of what we call science, natural or social, in such ideas. The so-called truth which the school seeks the realm of the metaphysical, in the realm of the beau­ in its program must conform to these presuppositions tiful—all comes under the dominion of God as we know or it is not truth. him primarily through the person of his Son. The abuses of this position are obvious. Its objective In beginning with Christ, we are not merely consider­ is an unworthy goal, that of maintaining the religious ing theological matters, but more critically the personal status quo. This view, as it has been presented, no doubt matter of commitment. The so-called liberal arts and represents an extreme statement, and yet there are some sciences arc joined to Christianity when the student and schools which follow this pattern in its most obvious teacher are themselves committed Christians. They are points. committed not to a collection of dogmas, certain hy-

JANUARY, 1962 9 potheses, set traditions or customs—they are committed to Jesus Christ. In him comes truth for he is the em­ bodiment of truth. When one's life is dedicated to Christ as Savior and Lord, liberal education is another part of the total truth of which he has already tasted. The correlation is made first in the person himself. It bears emphasis to state again that the prime pre­ supposition underlying the relationship between Chris­ tianity and liberal education is commitment to Christ. With this commitment higher education supplements and builds the Christian faith; without it the separation is maintained and even widened. It is a basis not of ideas, teachings, preconceived concepts, but a foundation in Jesus Christ—the person of God's incarnate Son. A second point of importance in relating education to the Christian faith has to do with our understanding of the nature of man. The Biblical accounts teach that man as man must be understood on the basis of several truths. Man was created (and, we might add, is created) for great ends. He was created to serve God in a free and perfect relationship, and furthermore he was created in the image of God—with self-conscious reason and the capacity to respond to God. It was God’s intention for man to remain in fellowship with Him and to conform to the image. But by deliberate choice, and knowledge of the consequences, man fell away into a state of sin or separation. The image of God became defaced and marred, though not destroyed. Then the books of the Bible teach that God has continually sought to restore a fallen mankind to himself—through Moses and the prophets, but predominantly and supremely in Jesus Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. It is the latter point that becomes our primary concern here—the restoration, the reconciliation, yes, the salvation of mankind. What is it that needs to be saved? The soul, the spirit, the heart? Ah, here our Greek heritage manifests itself, for we tend to say yes. While the Greeks tended to divide man into the com­ partments of body, mind, and soul, the Judeo-Christian rightfully points to the truth that man is a whole; he is a total person. It is the total man that needs salvation or restoration, not only a phase or a part of his per­ sonality. This means, then, if we take seriously the work of reconciliation, that the Christian is charged with the re­ sponsibility of ministering to the needs of the total person. The church must present Jesus Christ as Lord, yes, but also engage in a program of educating the student in the wide expanses of learning, of meeting his intellec­ tual, social, aesthetic, physical needs, so that all work together in remaking him into the imago clei, truly into one who is en Christo. Thus, liberal education—education of the total man—• is not incompatible with the Christian faith. It be­ comes an integral part of it. There is then a third conviction which relates to our

10 MENNONITE LIFE problem. The bridge between the Christian faith and Christian faith provides purpose to liberal education. liberal education must be built by the community of Chris­ Here the Christian view departs from the traditional tian scholars. The idea of the Kingdom of God was Greek view. Christian liberal education does not have taught by Jesus during his ministry, as the concept of man as its ultimate end, nor the preparation of man for the church was taught by Paul in early Christianity. service to the state. Christian liberal education views Christianity is community and fellowship. Though made the preparation of man for his ultimate goal in God— up of individuals with several abilities, functions, and the restoration of the imago dei and his dedication to services, yet the church is one body under the leader­ the work of the further reconciliation of others. Thus ship or lordship of Christ. a Christian liberal arts education, contrary to Greek The Christian college, then, if it would bring together thought, must prepare man for service to God and man. Christianity and liberal education, needs to become a Basically we have been saying that the schism between segment of God's people. A college—a collegium or a higher education and the church has existed for cen­ gathering of those with a specific mission— is a com­ turies; the suspicion and distrust between the Christian munity of Christian scholars, dedicated both to the loid- faith and liberal education, between the church and the ship of Christ and to the pursuit of knowing and doing college, probably will continue. No doubt each has the truth. It is the setting for research, for discussion, failed the other. But we are also saying that this schism for consideration of new ideas, for experimentation— can be and must be healed. Here lies a purpose for but all in the larger context of the heart and life of the the existence of the church-related college. Christian faith. We must with integrity view our historic faith and It is necessary, yes, imperative, that if so-called liberal build upon it. There is much truth here—meaningful education (the natural sciences, social sciences, and hu­ and relevant. Above all, we hold to a clear faith in manities) is to be integrally related to Christianity, this Jesus Christ our Lord and a belief in the kingdom pro­ must occur in the Christian college or community, where, claimed by him. In Christian community we seek truth, in the association of learners and teachers, the truth of knowledge, and meaning; we study the liberal arts and God can be pursued, discovered, considered, accepted, sciences, because these can add to and deepen the Chris­ and related. tian faith, and because the Christian faith can enlighten and give purpose to our learning. The Contribution of the Christin)) Faith The Christian faith on the college campus can be Finally, one might note that the Christian faith does an adventurous and inquiring faith, committed to Christ have something to contribute to the general field of lib­ and his kingdom, not to any particular dogma, creed, eral education. Christianity is that way of faith and or pattern. In this sense it must, as in Greek thought, life which illumines liberal education. As E. Harris remain liberal, existing for freedmen—free from their Harbison points out, "The goal of the liberal arts is to environs, mores, traditions, but free in Christ. provide hindsight and foresight of varying degrees of To relate liberal education to the Christian faith is a exactness in this universe of things and events; the part big job. The Christian scholar, as a person and in com­ cf Christian belief is to provide insight.”- Learned and munity with others, can do the job. devoted Christians in the field of liberal education, in humility and devotion to truth, can shed light on the wider meaning of the subjects they teach. ’Edmund Fuller, editor, The Christian Idea of Education, Yak- University Press, 1957, p. 61. Related to this, and more vital, is the truth that the -Ibid, pp. 74, 75.

JANUARY, 1962 11 THE ANABAPTIST CONCEPT OF THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION

By Arnold Nickel

If o n ly onk of die radical reformers of die early six­ The Anabaptist Concept of the Church teenth century could be with us for a few days, the Mennonite church and its related institutions would be To an amateur student in Mennonite history it appears challenged to an intensive search of its direction and difficult to arrive at any one particular Anabaptist con­ mission in the world and of its devotion to the Master. cept of the church. It is true that certain ideas of the The choice of a particular Anabaptist visitor would not church come into clearer focus than others; however, even greatly matter. It might well be Conrad Grebel, Georg the best scholars have difficulty in centering the lens on Blaurock, or Felix Manz from Switzerland; it could be the same subject as well as getting the image clearly Hans Denck, Ludwig Haetzer, Balthasar Hubmaier, Mich­ focused. Whether the central controlling idea of the ael Sattler or Pilgram Marbeck of Germany; or, and Anabaptists was primitivism and restitution, separation few would mind at all, it could be Menno Simons of from the world and the state church, discipleship, or any Holland. When one observes the keen logic and intense other, depends on the long list of limitations any historian feelings with which these "spiritual athletes" entered the confronts. However, it might be generally accepted that disputations with their opponents, and the large number the attempt on the part of the Anabaptists was to estab­ of people who were induced by their reasoning and elo­ lish the "true” church in the world. quence to become their followers, one realizes that these In the early years of the sixteenth century, and even well-trained champions of a cause were leaders with out­ before, the coming of a reformation seemed inevitable. standing abilities and fearless devotion. The nature of the work of God is such that there will Whereas it is impossible for one of these to speak to always be a "returning” of people to the Father. The us, it is possible to learn of their spiritual work because nature of the work of the Holy Spirit is to ". . . convince they did leave materials for us to study, to use and to the world of sin and of righteousness and of judg­ enlarge upon. Scholars of the most recent decades have ment. . .” and to ". . . guide you into all the truth; . . .” not been content with some of the biased and even hostile The nature of the New Testament company is such that writings from the pens of Lutheran and Reformed inter­ it will be an expression of the Divine will upon earth. It preters and historians. Present-day researchers have un­ is from this watershed that we begin our quest, and it was covered original materials covered by dust and other from this basic premise that the reformers stepped into books and attic boxes for several centuries. Anabaptist forest and frontier before them. Before the Reformation researchers, such as Franklin H. Littell, Fritz Blanke, had really gotten underway the real issue appeared. What and those of the Mennonite.brotherhood, deserve the right type of church should take the place of the old territorial to be heard on the Anabaptist concept of the church. and ecclesiastical church which they all knew so well and It is from their unrelenting efforts of study, classification in which they had been nurtured? New concepts ap­ of materials, and statements that we are privileged to peared; were severely tested by followers and persecutors; grasp the meaning of the New Testament church as under­ and eventually were structured by the radical reformers stood by Anabaptist fathers of the faith. in order to once again present the "true” church to the Summary statements are often inaccurate generaliza­ world. tions, still the factor of brevity is necessary in treatment The Reformed and Lutheran spiritual fathers aimed to of the chosen subject. Hence, a few paragraphs will be reform the old church by the Bible, and following the devoted to the Anabaptist views of the church before final separation with the old church these leaders retained attempting to point out some of the implications for significant old church ideas and relationships which re­ church-college relations.1 sulted in the concept of the Volkskirche, or the inclusive

12 MENNONITE LIFE state church led by both city and territorial political au­ the waysides, these brethren won adherents to the "true” thorities and ecclesiastical divines. Though radically dif- church, but also gained the stern disapproval of the state i crent in faith and creed from that of the Roman Catholic church. Persecutions and many social, political and Church, the church of the Reformation was not patterned economic harrassments sent them from their homes and after the Biblical and apostolic Christian fellowship. This fellowships into the territories and parishes beyond. Not of course could not be the "true” church upon earth only was this religious sect endangered by those with- according to the radical reformers for whom the Bible and uut, but internal problems and divisions also aided their love were the final tests of orthodoxy. Then further, spread. One of the basic challenges the Anabaptists con­ these radical Bible Christians searched the Word and fronted was that of gathering believers with a new spir­ their own consciences, and the offener they debated the itual experience and disciplining a new spiritual com­ issues with their opponents the more they were led to munity. However, their resources of faith, Scripture the position that the norm of the church on earth must and common spiritual experience gave to them concen­ be New Testament apostolic Christianity. For these sus and cohesiveness sufficient for growth and increas­ radicals the early church was the heroic age and its life ing maturity. They were able to rediscover the mean­ and style were normative for all true believers. And as ing of Christian brotherhood with Christ as the head of early as 1523 and 1525 the radical wing of the Reforma­ the spiritual body. tion was totally committed to a program of the complete The witness of the Anabaptist wing of the Reforma­ restitution of apostolic Christianity. From that time their tion is a testimony both to the nature of the "true” church mission was to reproduce as literally as possible the primi­ and to the vision of Christian discipleship. This con­ tive apostolic church in its original purity and simplicity; cept of the church is further explained as the gathering restore Christianity once more to a basis of individual of voluntary religious associations under the Lordship faith and an internal disciplined brotherhood. of Christ; the freedom of the Christian combined with Franklin H. Littell points out that at least two notes the utmost discipline in the community; the application stand out from the rest; namely, "The Church must be a of an ethic of love and nonresistance in all human rela­ voluntary association, and, the Church must follow the tionships; the understanding of Christianity as faith in New Testament pattern.”2 To determine the individual’s Jerus Christ and obedience to the Great Commission. responsibility to God through faith in Christ and his responsibility and relationship to the Christian church be­ General Conference Concept of the Church came an ever-increasing search of soul, Scripture, and The General Conference Mennonite Church today Spirit. The Anabaptists believed in the right of indi­ snil stands in the line of direct cultural and religious vidual conscience, but they emphasized as much collective descent from the sixteenth century Anabaptists. Many responsibility and obedience to the Lord of the church. within this branch of the Mennonites today, both indi­ This point is partially clarified by Robert Friedmann. viduals and congregations, would seriously question Contrasting other Protestant movements with Anabap- vnether to choose identity with the Anabaptists if such tism, he writes: "Everybody still remains alone, seeking a choice were theirs today. In fact, the writer is not at his personal salvation, and he only enjoys the sharing all certain that he would choose to be numbered with of edification with the like-minded co-religionists. Or such a radical group as the Anabaptists were in their to put it in other words: the brother is not absolutely nine. Of course it is difficult to pattern our faith and necessary for the salvation of the individual, which rests practice after that of the Anabaptists due to the radical alone in the possession of one’s faith. . . . Now then, cnanges which have taken place in Anabaptist-Menno- the central idea of Anabaptism, the real dynamic in nile history as well as changes in world view and world the age of Reformation, as I see it, was this, that this order. Nevertheless, if the assumption was correct that 'brother' actually matters in the personal life. . . . This me Anabaptists could pattern their faith and fellowship interdependence of men gives life and salvation a new alter that of apostolic Christianity, should it not be pos­ meaning. It is not 'faith alone’ which matters (for which sible for us to do the same? Perhaps it is unwillingness faith no church organization would be needed) but it un our part to be radically different in faith and life which is brotherhood, this intimate caring for each other, as has made of us what we are today. Our concept of the it was commanded to the disciples of Christ as the way church has suffered clarity because of our ambiguous re­ to God’s kingdom. That was the discovery which made lationship to the Protestantism and to the state. Dis­ Anabaptism so forceful and outstanding in all of church tinctive characteristics of the General Conference Men­ history.”3 nonites are partially hidden in cultural traditions, reli­ Another most significant witness of the Anabaptists gious and materialistic influences and decades of prosperi­ was that they believed that the Great Commission of our ty. Our churches are hardly known as the fellowship Lord was meant for all members of the brotherhood, of the heroic in faith; hardly known as the suffering for and thereby represented an early vision of what is known the faith; scarcely known as the dispossessed and per­ today as a world mission. Through zealous communi­ secuted in the earth. We are to be observed as the com­ cation of their faith to others in public places and on munity of the well-dressed, gadget-laden, gainfully-em-

JANÜARY, 1962 13- ployed and the religious churchgoers who have adopted the conference and its related institutions is also tested part and parcel the American ways of life and the Amer­ by the New Testament norms of apostolic Christianity. ican standards of Protestant church membership. The The tics that bind the church, conference and college into concepts of the church, though broadly defined in some a unique whole are the ties of a mutual spirit, mutual of our conference literature, are perhaps best illustrated helpfulness, and a mutual mission upon earth. It is con­ by roles performed in the General Conference churches. ceivable and possible for local congregations to remain The particular work of a Mennonite minister is not autonomous and have no ties with any other group of to win the lost but to win the love and confidence of his churches; it is also possible for institutions, such as Chris­ parishioners. His second obligation is to spend much tian colleges, to have no formal ties with a church or a time in retaining their love and confidence. The role group of churches united as a conference. It is already of the ministry in our midst has been tranplanted from true within the General Conference that a number of that of central spiritual influence in the community of churches have no ties with the conference-related educa­ faith to that of an administrative-counselor in the intri­ tional institutions. Perhaps this separation is an indi­ cate and complex socio-religious structure we call the cation of silent growth, but perhaps it is a sign of en­ church today. And "as thy servant was busy here and croaching spiritual death. Or maybe it implies that no there” the real opportunities to guard the faith, to com­ relationship was ever contracted, and efforts toward a municate the Gospel, and to enter into meaningful con­ mutual relationship were either not put forth or not suc­ versation with fellow Christians, have passed into other cessfully completed. If it is possible to convey the es­ places. If ministers, and educators in our Christian lib­ sence of the Anabaptist concept of the church to our eral arts colleges should be included, fail to become broth­ present need, might it be possible to suggest that the ers and witnesses of the faith, it is hardly to be expected relationship between the conference, college and church that a purposeful and growing Christian fellowship can should be first and foremost a spiritual relationship, and be realized. Ministers of the General Conference Men­ second, a mutual relationship whereby the unique mis­ nonite churches should have an intense interest in the sion God has given to the General Conference Menno­ Anabaptist concept of the ministry as well as of the nite churches could be more fully and speedily met in church, and should have a dynamic desire to make apos­ this desperate world? In essence this is what has been tolic Christianity vital in this century. attempted through the past one hundred years, and in Second, the particular role of the average member in form this has considerable structure, but in actuality the life and program of the congregation is difficult to this work is far from complete. New and vigorous life see on the stage of congregational activity today. His must be poured into it. The inroads of numerous out­ faith is generally hidden from his fellowman because side religious interpretations of the Christian church and he has not been taught to express it; his life is disci­ its mission, personality clashes in high offices, change plined by the mores of his particular environment; and in program emphases, conflicts of the sacred and the sec­ his standards of life have been rooted by a society in ular, and many, many other factors have had a part in which the church is peripheral and gainful employment separating one from another. Some of the separations is central to soul and body. The time he gives to his which have taken place through the century within the church is residue time, and the talents he offers to the General Conference have made it difficult to realize the church are most generally those which he has not de­ promise that nothing "shall be able to separate us from veloped or specially trained. "Strengthening the spir­ the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." itual life" is not his primary business, whether in per­ sonal life, family circle or church fellowship. Specialists Implications for Church-College Relations have assumed the role on the stage of Christian activity, Several implications might merit consideration in this and the average member is but an observer of what is article, however, these only begin a series to which nu­ being done by his church. Too great a number of the merous others should be added. First, the communica­ members in good standing are stalled somewhere along tion of a common faith should be a common goal of the road to spiritual maturity, and blinded by the lights church and Christian college. "One Lord, one faith” has that do shine ahead of them. The Anabaptist concept been one of the primary reasons for the beginning of the of discipleship and of fellowship based on the foundation General Conference. We are not known as a creedal of the New Testament norm should become relevant for church, but we ought to be a church and a Christian col­ church members in our generation. Our increasing iden­ lege able to communicate the faith which we have re­ tification with the spirit of individualism and our role ceived of the Lord. As did the Anabaptists so ought as members in the local congregation need to come un­ we to testify to the relevance of our faith to all of life. der the judgment of the Anabaptist concepts of the It is at times quite evident that both members of the church. For the genius of the Anabaptists was that mem­ churches and students of the colleges have not received bership was voluntary but the exercise of discipline was a faith which they are able to apply and communicate expected of the individual and by the entire group. to others. The church has failed to teach persuasively Third, the relationship of the local congregation to and the college has failed to teach precisely what apos-

14 MENNONITE LIFE folic Christianity has to say to every generation. The most superficial and dangerously hypocritical even in church has fallen short of its inherent purpose to instill Christian circles. Hidden motives and defensive roles a faith adequate for life and for the deeper probings of often rule the mind when the spirit desires communion the intellectual mind and spirit of a college campus. The with God and man. Similarly, church-college relations Christian college has fallen short of its basic aim to give are marred by the things that are not seen, rather than to the student the tools and materials whereby he can by what is seen. "The more we get together" is not suffi­ build upon the Christian foundations throughout his life­ cient for our need of seeking fellowship with each other, time. The church must do more than to keep alive a and our need to openly discuss what is really "upon our traditional-cultural religion, and the college must do more hearts.” The concern of the brethren clearly stamped than to sponsor entertainment scries for its constituency. the Anabaptist-Mennonite brotherhood, and it should be Both the church and the college need to discover the one of our definitive marks as we witness to each other Spirit and Word of God. and desire to communicate the and to the world which is God’s handiwork. 4 Christian faith to each other, to each new generation, and Fourth, the confrontation of Mennonites and their to the field. The Anabaptists discovered the New Testa­ colleges with the larger Protestant church and with so­ ment concept of the church by means of their communi­ ciety at large is an undying challenge in every genera­ cation of the faith to each other and even through the tion. We still find ourselves in a world of good and disputations with thc-ir opponents. evil; a world in which God seeks His own and a world Second, the understanding and exercise of freedom in which sin is a reality. As never before in history the and responsibility suggests the nature of the relationship Mennonite people have become identified with larger between church and college. The freedom of the indi­ Protestantism and with secular society. The people of vidual Christian grows out of the very nature of man as the pew and academic scats have a far better knowledge a creature of God and is not a gift of either church or of what is going on about us than we who work within state. The autonomy of the congregation comes not from a more-or-lcss closed framework imposed upon us by man or state but also from God. However, we need to our institutions. Both the church and college must find remember that with freedom comes the responsibility new ways and better means of broadening our fellow­ to act as free men who recognize the freedom of others ship with fellow Christians; we must learn new methods as well as a corporate freedom to exercise Christian dis­ for adopting change in our changing society; and we cipline. Only the responsible are really free. The col­ must find means for more effective learning and witness­ lege-church relationship based on institutional freedom ing as we encounter the church and the world. We must and responsibility is the only relationship which is able do much more than to eventually endorse what our peo­ to bind church and college into a truly Christian fellow­ ple have long been engaged in doing. We must make ship. This implication needs further expansion and clari­ ours a dynamic church with Christ as prophet and priest, fication by both church and college. and our college must achieve new dynamic with Christ as teacher. We must move forward, agree on our Chris­ Third, the promotion of Fellowship and Christian con­ tian concepts and mission, and walk together. We must cern marked the early Anabaptist movement. We must learn to walk with Christ as hand in hand we, the rep­ .have freedom, but equally as much do we need fellow­ resentatives of both church and college, endeavor to ful­ ship. Expressions of fellowship and concern can be fill His command to go into the world to preach and teach. Early Anabaptist preaching took place in homes, in the open, in cares and on boats as shown on this picture. ’Cornelius Krahn, "Anabaptism and the Culture of The Nether­ lands" in The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision, (Scottdale: Herald Press) pp. 221-224. -The Anabaptist View of the Church (Boston, Beacon Press, p. 50. '"On the Mennonite Historiography and on Individualism and Brotherhood," Mennonite Quarterly Review, April, 19-14.

Correction

In the October, 1961, issue we published an article on p. 192 entitled "The Challenge of Men.no Today.” The author of the article was not Frits Kuiper as stated but K, Westerbrink, an active member of the Mennonite Church of Amsterdam and an employee in a bank. Our apologies and grateful recognition.

JANUARY, 1962 15 Pioneers in Mennonite Education

By Ed. G. Kaufman

Thinking on pioneers in Mennonite education one were offered for the best contributions on various sub­ naturally goes back to the Reformation. Early Anabap­ jects. Not only Mennonite scholars, but men of various tist leaders were university trained men. Conrad Grebel, background in Holland, France, and Germany competed who performed the first adult baptism, was educated in for these honors. The Dutch Mennonites became famous the universities of Vienna and Paris as a master of Greek far and wide through this Teyler Foundation.- who also wrote Latin fluently. Felix Manz, the first Gradually the desire for an educated ministry made Anabaptist martyr, was also well educated including in itself felt and in 1735 crystallized in the Mennonite his studies, Greek and Hebrew. Balthasar Hubmeier, Seminary at Amsterdam. This institution has not only theologian and university rector, studied philosophy and given the Dutch Mennonites an educated leadership but theology under the famous Dr. Eck. For a time he was also exerted a great influence toward uniting the various instructor at the University of Freiburg and later served Mennonite branches of that country. as professor of theology at Ingolstadt. In Germany it was M. Loewenberg who set forces in The gifted Hans Denck was a graduate of the Univer­ motion in 1867 that gradually developed into the Men­ sity of Ingolstadt and also studied at Basel. He was nonite school at Weierhof (Realanstalt am Dennersberg). appointed as rector of a school at Nürnberg at the age of Although during the war time the school was closed, it 28. He knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew well and wrote is again functioning today and is supported by Menno­ several books as philosopher and scholar. In 1527 he nites all over Germany. assisted with the translation of the Old Testament proph­ ets. Thirteen editions of this work came out in the fol­ lowing three years. Both Luther and Zwingli later used Francis Daniel Pastorius it in the production of their own translations. For a The first educational institution attended by American few years he was the leader of South German Anabap- Mennonites was established in Germantown, Pennsyl­ tism. "Denk was three hundred years ahead of his time,” vania, in 1701, with Francis Daniel Pastorius as teacher. says theologian Baum.1 He died of the pest not yet 32 Pastorius was born in Germany in 1651. He attended years of age. four.universities: Altdorf, Strassburg, Basel, and Jena. Later in Holland, Menno Simons, 13 years younger He was made a doctor of lav/ at Nürnberg in 1676. than Luther, was an influential Anabaptist leader. He Having met William Penn in Frankfurt he organized was educated for the Roman priesthood and knew some the Frankfurt Land Company which bought some thirty Greek and Hebrew. Although primarily an organizer thousand acres of land in Pennsylvania. In 1683 he and preacher he did much educational work by his in­ came to America as the agent of the land company. cessant writing in behalf of radical reform. The early Some Crefeld Mennonites and Quakers followed. Pas­ persecution took the educated leaders and for generations torius founded Germantown where he was of great in­ thereafter, due to suppression, migration, and isolation, fluence and served as teacher for many years. His education among Mennonites in some countries remained Germantown school was supported through voluntary at a low ebb. subscriptions by those interested and tuition paid by students. It was open to both sexes and besides its Educational Efforts in Europe regular day sessions also had evening classes for those who could not attend during the day. In various countries of Europe education again came Pastorius also did much writing. His most important to the surface gradually. In Holland, Peter Teyler van educational work was A New Primer — Or Methodical der Hulst established the Teyler Foundation in 1778. Directions to Attain the True Spelling, Reading, and He left considerable capital for this institution. Prizes Writing of English published by William Bradford of

16 MENNONITE LIFE Michael Löwen­ berg, founder oj the Weierhof Re- al an st ah.

The Weierhof Re­ alanstalt or sec­ ondary Mennonile school of Germany.

Samuel Muller (1785-1875) was influential leader and semi­ Gustav Gäbet, one of the late professors nary professor in Amsterdam. of the Weierhof secondary school. j--- New York. For the last twenty years of his life Pas- where he was converted under D. L. Moody. After ten torius served as teacher/1 years in Chicago he moved his lumber and publication interests to Elkhart, Indiana. Here he gathered a group Christopher Dock of able and progressive younger men around him and Another pioneer of Mennonite education in America made Elkhart the strong center of leadership and growth was Christopher Dock, who in the middle of the eight­ among Old Mennonites. His base of operation was his eenth century was widely known as "The Pious School­ publishing house. He was very influential in Conference master” in eastern Pennsylvania. He also was born in organization and education, including Elkhart Institute.5 Germany, the exact date does not seein to be known. Dock came to America in about 1710, locating on a John H. überholizer (1S09-1S95) farm near Philadelphia. He began his teaching career in about 1714 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on Oberholtzer began teaching when he was sixteen years the Skippack, among the Mennonites. In the same year of age and continued for fifteen years. In 1842 he was he opened a second school in Salford, teaching alternately ordained to the ministry. He served as editor of the first three days a week in each one. In the Germantown Mennonite periodical published in America, the Religiöser Mennonite meetinghouse may yet be seen the table and Botschafter, appearing in 1852. In this paper he often bench used by him in his teaching. urged the necessity of education. Before the free public Dock’s fame as teacher became so widely known that schools, farmers in Pennsylvania often would join in Christopher Saur, the Germantown publisher and former building a schoolhouse and engaging a teacher for their pupil of Dock, in 1749 asked Dock to write out his boys. Near Boyertown lived John Ritter with a large methods of teaching and school management for publi­ family of boys. Ritter built his own two-story school- cation. Dock was too modest to do that. However, his house. The second floor was the schoolroom while the friend, Dielman Kolb, submitted a list of questions for first floor was occupied by his pigs. Here Oberholtzer Dock’s written answers. Finally he consented to an­ was engaged to teach the Ritter boys and others who swer the questions. Dock’s Scbnl-Onlnnng (School Man­ came in on payment of tuition. Not infrequently the agement) was put in manuscript form in 1750 and later Ritter boys, with intent and premeditation, so aroused in 1770 was published, thereby becoming the first book and stimulated the pigs that the confusion of the first on the subject written in America. The treatise is in five floor made it impossible to continue with the school on sections, covering a child's up-bringing at home as well the second floor. This double purpose building was as educational procedure in school. known in the community as the "pig-sty schoolhouse.” Dock was a dedicated Christian and had the custom Oberholtzer was the leader of a group of more pro­ each evening, after the pupils had gone, to remain in gressive Mennonite ministers in eastern Pennsylvania. the schoolroom for prayer, naming each pupil before There was strong opposition to these tendencies. As a God in prayer. One evening in the autumn of 1771 he result on October 28, 1847, Oberholtzer and fifteen other failed to come home as usual. He was found in the ministers organized a new conference called the East- schoolroom on his knees, dead.1 Pennsylvania Conference of Mennonites, the forerunner of our General Conference.0 The Funks Joseph Funk (1778-1862), conducted a school in Abraham FI unsicher Mountain Valley (Singer’s Glenn), Virginia, during the years 1850-1860. Besides the general school subjects, A member of the Oberholtzer group, Abraham Hun- music was especially emphasized. For nearly half a sicker, purchased a tract of ten acres near Philadelphia century Singer's Glenn was a source of authority and with his own funds and established Freeland Seminary inspiration of sacred music. Joseph Funk also founded in 1848. The school was opened in the same year in the first Mennonite printing establishment in America. November with three students but increased to 79 before He and his sons organized singing schools in at least the end of the school year. For 22 years this school was eleven counties of Virginia. The writings and compila­ in operation with his son Henry becoming the leading tions of his include seven books and periodicals. The promoter and teacher. Students from various denomina­ most humous one was Harmonia Sacra, of which twenty- tions and different states enrolled. The Hunsickers start­ two editions have been printed, the last in 1959. The ed the school naturally hoping their main support would Funk Press was the forerunner of the present Funk and come from Oberholtzer Mennonites, instead many of Wagnalls Company of New York City. them were offended and finally they even excommuni­ One of the great-grandsons of emigrant Christian cated them from the church because of their liberal ten­ Funk was John F. Funk (1835-1930) who became a very dencies. In 1859 Freeland Seminary was sold and be­ distinguished Mennonite leader in the nineteenth cen­ came the present Ursinus College of the Reformed tury. In his youth he attended Freeland Seminary, (now Church. During the seventeen years of Henry I-Iun- Ursinus College), and became a teacher. Later he en­ sicker’s principalship a total of 3,791 students had en­ tered the lumber and publishing business in Chicago rolled. The story of Mennonitism in America would be

MENNONITE LIFE different today had the Mennonites taken a different established in 1903; Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, attitude toward Freeland Seminary.7 in 1908; Hesston College, Hesston, Kansas, in 1909; Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1917, and others. The Wadsworth School In his annual summary for 1959-60 of "Attendance at Gradually in various parts of America small groups Mennonite Colleges”'", Silas Hertzler lists nineteen Men­ with greater interest in higher education developed. Be­ nonite institutions of higher learning in America. Six sides the Oberholtzer group in Pennsylvania, there was of these are located in two Canadian provinces and thir­ a similar Canada-Ohio group as well as an Iowa-Illinois teen in eight states of the United States. These Menno­ group. A meeting of representatives of all three groups nite institutions for 1959-60 had a total enrollment of was called to convene on May 28, I860, at West Point, 4,949, including only 79 sub-college and 187 graduate Lee County, Iowa. This was the beginning of the Gen­ students, with men and women about equally divided in eral Conference. Education was considered important. the total enrollment. Later Daniel Hege was chosen to solicit funds for a school. On November 22, 1S63, he returned to his After long, painful, and very difficult pioneering in home in Summerficld, Illinois, with a total of $5,738.58 Mennonite education, these figures are tremendous. from twenty-four congregations and a few isolated indi­ However, that is not all. Albert Meyer, in a study for viduals. Eight days after his return he died, having the 1960-61 school year,1' points out that while the three developed typhoid fever during his strenuous solicitation major branches (Old Mennonites, General Conference, tour. and Mennonite Brethren) in their respective colleges had 3,627 of their own young people enrolled, they also During the summer and autumn of 1866; a school had 2,690 young people enrolled in colleges and univer­ building was erected on a 103-acre farm near Wads­ sities other than their own. That is 46 per cent in other worth. The dedicatory services were held on October than their own institutions. For the General Conference 13 and 14 of the same year, with the main address given 1,135 students attended their own schools, while 1,329 by John H. Oberholtzer. However, because of lack of or 54 per cent were in other institutions, including teachers, the school was not opened until January, 1868. graduate students. There were three departments: theology, German and elementary branches, and English and the sciences. The Speaking about pioneers in Mennonite education, a head teacher, C. J. van der Smissen, who was also pro­ great and very important area for future pioneer work in fessor of theology, was secured from Europe, while the Mennonite higher education lies with these young people others were men from this country. who attend other institutions than their own. Although Soon difficulties of various kinds arose. In 1873 the one is grateful that so many young Mennonite people Mennonite migration from Russia to the prairie states are going to college, still, the fact that about one-half began and required attention and money to the detri­ of them attend schools on the college and graduate level ment of the school. The deficit steadily grew. Finally, other than their own is a challenge that the church at the eighth session of the Conference in 1S78, it was cannot afford to bypass unconcernedly except at its own decided to close the school, sell the building, and collect peril. funds to cover the deficit. The school had run eleven years at a total cost of 531,700 and a total enrollment of 310, including at least 209 different persons; at least 130 were Mennonites.8 'Ludwig Keller, Ein Apostel der Wiedertäufer, pp. I l l and 237. The Beginning of Colleges -Mennonite Encyclopedia. Vo I. IV, p. 703. •'See M. D. Learned, The Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius, When Wadsworth was closed, Bethel College was ( 1908), pp. 166 ff. already in the making, receiving its charter in 1887. 'Brumbaugh, Life and Works of Christopher Dock, pp. 104 ff.; Later some records and various other materials, including J. E. Hartzier, Education Among the Mennonites of America, a valuable old van der Smissen pipe organ, were trans­ pp. 5S-68. ferred from Wadsworth to Bethel. These treasures arc •'Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 11, pp. 421-423. now in our Historical Library and the Kauffman Mu­ "Ed. G. Kaufman, The Mennonite Missionary Interest, pp. 76 ff.; Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, p. 13. seum.’' 7Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 389. Soon other Mennonite colleges came into being. In 8Ed. G. Kaufman, op. cit., 89 ff. 1894 the Elkhart Institute was founded in Elkhart, In­ "Ed. G. Kaufman, op. cit., pp.89-97. diana, now Goshen College. In 1900 Central Menno­ 1,1Mennonite Quarterly Review, July, 1961, p. 238 ff. nite College was established at Bluffton, now Bluffton 11Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Mennonite Edu­ College. Freeman College, Freeman, South Dakota, was cational and Cultural Problems, 1961.

JANUARY, 1962 19 I Take a Religious inventory

By Berneil Mueller

T o lera n ce and conviction; tradition and progress; in- While constant change may make "ancient good un­ tellectualism and emotionalism: So many different em­ couth," it cannot nullify the impact of the ages. Out phases make themselves heard in our contemporary Chris­ of my religious heritage come truths and a way of life tianity. And the one who listens is left with the duty that demand my attention. Transmitted through the cen­ of either making these different voices a part of himself, turies, preserved by the group, taught by the family, or thrusting them away. The remnants must then be this heritage cannot and should not be shrugged off. My molded into a unity. duty would seem to be the selection of what appears to As the voices of contemporary Christianity pour in be the highest and best and the application of these upon me, I grasp the three paradoxes to build a reli­ principles to the day in which I live. Yet even as I gious unity for myself: tolerance and conviction; tradi­ claim these truths, I find myself strangely drawn toward tion and progress; intellectuaiism and emotionalism. the orthodox, liturgical churches from which my religious forbears emancipated themselves. The union of tolerance and conviction into a pleasant But there is yet another area of the Christian life in association rather than dissociation appeals to me. It would which I wish to involve myself. This is the area of the be my desire to tolerate and appreciate every sincere re­ development of religious ideas and theological implica­ ligious expression, whether it be that of the ecstatic Pente- tions. May I never be satisfied with a simple faith that costalist or the quiet dignity of the Roman Catholic. I does not take into consideration the complexity of life. would realize the mystery of God in the aura of the May I never accept the optimism of Christianity without orthodox service, have the availability of God imparted the accompanying pessimism. And while I explore the to me as I wait in the Quaker meeting. I would know many ramifications of religious concepts, I hope never that God visits both the richly attired and those in plain to forget that in every religion there must be the elements dress. of action and emotional release. Then, to season toleration with conviction, to add And so, when it is all summed up, where am I in strength to mildness, I would know that there are those this sweeping many-layered structure called "Contempo­ things within myself that will always be there, even if rary American Christianity?" A left-winger approaching these be ever-changing "truths”—so long as they be the the right; a rejoicer in the ecumenical movement, yet highest truths available to me at the present hour. I anxious for individual freedom; an aspirant after the deep would realize that while I may appreciate that which I implications of truth, yet not scornful of those more cannot understand, openmindedness is of no value with­ easily satisfied. I would that I could see all, enfold all, out the backbone of certainty. and yet remain uniquely and individually myself.

20 MENNONITE LIFE THE ROLE OF PREACHING IN ANABAPTIST TRADITION

By Corneltns J. Dyck

Last year th e Mennonite Seminary of Amsterdam cele­ In examining the role of preaching in the Anabaptist brated the 225th year of its founding. Aside from the tradition, one immediately becomes aware of two major historical and fraternal significance of this for us as a obstacles that needed to be overcome—one internal, the "sister” institution, the occasion stimulates thinking about other external. The first was their concept of the priest­ the function of theological institutions in our church tra­ hood of all believers; the second was the insistence of dition. Prior to the founding of the Amsterdam Menno­ their opponents that their ministry was not only illegal nite Seminary, young men had occasionally been encour­ but illegitimate. Let us look at these for a moment. aged to receive private tutelage from leading ministers.1 In their understanding of the priesthood of all be­ Some had attended non-Mennonite seminaries. It was, in lievers, the Anabaptists were indebted to Martin Luther. fact, the concern over the large number of students at­ As early as 1520 Luther had written in his first great tending the Remonstrant seminary that prompted the es­ Reformation treatise: tablishment of the Amsterdam Mennonite Seminary in 1735. This event, however, simply enhances the signifi­ All Christians are truly of the "spiritual estate” and there is among them no difference but that of office. If cance of the fact that for the first two hundred years the a little group of pious Christian laymen were taken cap­ Mennonites did not have seminaries, being more or less tive and set down in a wilderness, and had among them committed to the lay ministry. no priest consecrated by a bishop, and if there in the wil­ The stated purpose of the Mennonite Biblical Semi­ derness they were to agree in choosing one of themselves, nary, Elkhart, Indiana, is to train men and women for married or unmarried, and were to charge him with the the Christian ministries. Through this training the young office of baptizing, saying mass, absolving and preaching, men particularly are prepared for one of their most im­ such a man would be as truly a priest as though all portant ministerial tasks: that of preaching. Now if bishops and popes had consecrated him.2 our seminary has been faithful over the years, and if To a certain extent the Anabaptists said and still say this may be said of other Mennonite seminaries here and the same: The power to call a man to the ministry re­ in Europe, we might conclude that Mennonite preaching sides with the people. But there was one significant dif­ today is more powerful and effective than that of the ference which led to a parting of the ways. While 16th century lay Anabaptists. As I set out to discover Luther, under the impact of Carlstadt and the Zwickau the nature of Mennonite preaching, however, I soon Prophets and Thomas Müntzer became increasingly skep­ discovered that little has been written upon this sub­ tical of the ability of the local congregation to call the ject. This led me to begin with 16th century' Anabap- right man, the Anabaptists moved in the opposite direc­ tism. What was the place of the sermon in the total tion by insisting that, since they had a church of believers, worship experience of the Anabaptists and in relation everybody was, not only potentially but actually, called to the emphasis of the reformers? What were the major to preach. themes discussed? What was the place of the Scriptures Following his return from the Wartburg in 1522, in preaching? What I wish to present, therefore, is Luther tended in the direction of having the call come simply one part of the total question of preaching in through two channels: 1) training, and 2) the con­ Mennonite churches—its place among our fathers of sistory—in effect, the state. He did not eliminate the the sixteenth century. This seems to me to be the logical inner call but subordinated it to the acquisition of thor­ point at which to begin my inquiry. ough training at Wittenberg and to orderly placement

JANUARY, 1962 21 by the authorities. The voice of the congregation soon every man, prince or ploughboy, praying to God directly became nominal. The ministry was put upon almost the and reading his own Bible without an intermediary priest, same level as other civil service. The Anabaptists, on in Anabaptism the priesthood of believers led to an in­ the other hand, particularly in the first years of the move­ creasing emphasis upon witness and mission outreach. ment, believed that baptism was, in effect, equivalent to God was calling them to be priests to others. Now ordination. Thus Felix Manz could say, "When some while this did lead to a great mission outreach, it led came to me weeping and asking for baptism I could not also, if I may be pardoned the colloquialism, to the place refuse them but did according to their desire.” And where all seemed to be chiefs and no Indians were left Manz became the first martyr of the movement, because to listen. Rivalries and tensions resulted. It is possible he insisted upon instructing and baptizing those who came that the very frequent Anabaptist sermonic emphasis to him for help.3 Conrad Grebel said, "My belly is upon the dangers of pride may have arisen, in part, out as new wine without a vent, which bursts the new wine­ of jealousy. Are not all believers equal before God and skins . . . pray that God may send strong laborers into equally close to him? Thus the beautiful doctrine of the great harvest."1 Menno Simons wrote, "My heart the priesthood of all believers has within Anabaptism trembles within me and my joints quake when I con­ often become a demonic device for the stifling of ini­ sider that the whole world, lords, princes, learned and tiative; it has confused the understanding of the call unlearned people . . . are so far from Christ Jesus and (and still does), and it has been at the heart of many from eternal life.”3 And he continued later to give us of the divisions throughout the history of the Anabap- this classic statement: tist-Mennonite movement. The fault, however, lies not Therefore we preach, as much as is possible, both by in the doctrine but in an inadequate understanding of it. day and by night, in houses and in fields, in forests and In any case, this doctrine helped to define the nature wastes, hither and yon, at home or abroad, in prisons and of the church, which in turn defined preaching. For dungeons, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on Luther the church was where the Word is rightly preached the wheel, before lords and princes, through mouth and and the sacraments properly administered. For the pen, with possessions and blood, with life and death . . . Anabaptists the church was where there was faith and for we feel his living fruit and moving power in our discipline. Luther emphasized preaching because many hearts . . . We could wish that we might save all man­ in the congregation were, in his own words, name Chris­ kind from the jaws of hell, free them from the chains of tians only and needed to be won. But the Anabaptist their sins, and by the gracious help of God add them to church assumed that it consisted of believers only; there­ Christ by the Gospel of his peace/’ fore, what was needed was not "gospel,” but "law.” While it became increasingly true that the Anabaptists Conversion gave to them the essential knowledge of God were not all preachers, and that they too depended upon and of his will. They needed henceforth simply to be the call of God to come through the brotherhood—• reprimanded, exhorted, and disciplined. They knew as Luther did through the state and education—still, in perfectly well what was right and wrong, since they the early days every believer was a minister, always ready believed that the Spirit was their guide. And so theology and willing to testify to what God had done for him. gradually became ethics. The big issues were moral, This charismatic priesthood made training unnecessary. not theological, and the options were black or white. In David Joris rejoiced that the Holy Spirit had stopped the absence of critical scholarship after the first leaders speaking in Greek and Latin and was finally speaking died, increasing reliance was placed upon tradition rather to him in Dutch! The records contain many Anabap­ than the Scriptures, and with it came the slow decline tist denunciations of the learned, the wise after their own of original fervor. hearts. "Here men pray in the Spirit and in truth,” This is not to say that the Lutheran ministers did not said Menno of his own group, "there (referring to the have their problems of communication. One of them churches with trained ministers) they mock in a flood once advised his simple listeners that they should whistle of empty words.” And he reached a climax by saying, whenever they heard someone tell a lie. "A little later, "in short, here is Christ and God, there is Antichrist and he preached on the creation of man and, desiring to be the devil.”7 This emphasis did not encourage the Ana­ as graphic and plain as possible, he said, 'When God baptist preacher to spend one hour in preparation for Almighty had made heaven and earth, he rolled in one every minute of delivery! Yet Lutheran preaching was a lump of clay and fashioned it into the likeness of a man almost entirely expository and vigorous: no less than and then leaned it on a fence to harden.' When an three sermons on Sunday and one for every day of the insolent peasant heard this, he whistled very loudly right week.® When all are priests, the Anabaptists held, no in the church. The parson noticed it and said, W hat! one has a monopoly upon the gift of the Spirit. When Do you think, peasant, that I am lying?’ 'No,' replied all are sensitive to the Spirit, how can one of them be the peasant, 'but who made the fence when there was uniquely prophetic? not yet any man on earth.’ Whereas in Lutheranism this doctrine of the priesthood It is apparent, from this survey of Anabaptism and of believers led to an emphasis upon the possibility of the priesthood of believers problem, that they could not

22 MENNONITE LIFE and did not develop a dynamic and prophetic pulpit It is clear that dynamic preaching requires a dynamic tradition. The spiritualize«, of course, were the real sense of being called. Though the call itself may begin prophets of the age, but main-line Anabaptism washed within, or externally through the congregation, it must its hands of them and simply moved even further to eventually include both. It is one of the purposes of the the right. seminary faculty and curriculum to clarify and strengthen The second obstacle confronting the Anabaptist preach­ the inner call of those who come to the institution. This er was the insistence of his opponents that his ministry is also a basic task for students among themselves. No was illegitimate, or as the Dutch called it "hij looped one should leave the seminary to "loop van hem selven,” van hem selven” (he runs on his own). It is related that is, to run by himself. Concerning the external call, to what we have been saying, but since it can take us is it too much to ask that every candidate for the minis­ quite far afield, I will touch on it only briefly. try receive a vote of confidence from his congregation, An examination of the early debates between the Ana­ that the congregation send him to the seminary here with baptists and their opponents reveals that most of the their blessing and prayers? Dynamic preaching requires latter, throughout the sixteenth century, challenged the a dynamic sense of being called. Anabaptists’ right to preach, i.e., their calling. This was not because the opponents did not hold to the priest­ The Role of the Sermon hood of all believers, as we have seen, but because they did not consider the Anabaptist church a legitimate Turning now to the sermon itself, we note, as indi­ church and denied the Anabaptist claim that they also cated, the paucity of sources from the early years of the had a direct call from God. Thus when Menno de­ 16th century. To prevent this from continuing, it might fended himself by saying that' he was called by the only be worthwhile to encourage the publication of an annual true church, this was no answer to the charges. He volume of sermons from Mennonite pulpits—a project did, however, answer them in defining the nature of the well worth undertaking for the spiritual growth of the church. people. The answer of the Anabaptists was two-fold. First, There was a significant difference between the classical they said as Menno did that theirs was the true church reformers' understanding of the nature of the sermon which had called them. In doing so they admitted the and that of the Anabaptists. For Luther and Calvin importance of the external call. And second, they said the sermon was verbmn Dei, God speaking to the people. (with Paul) that God had called them, thus affirming Combined with the exalted office given to the preacher, the importance of the inner call. After the first genera­ this made the sermon more than "merely” human. No tion of the movement, the external call seemed to pre­ sermon could be disregarded by the laity with impunity. cede the inner call, particularly when ministers were "God speaks through the preacher,” said Luther. "When chosen by the lot. Unless a congregation called the we preach we are passive rather than active. God is member to preach, he did not preach. Only in the nine­ speaking through us, and it is a divine working.”10 The teenth century did we begin to return to the possibility Anabaptists, on the other hand, held the sermon to be a of having an inner call precede the external call of the witness of what God had done and was doing. A re­ church, and, in fact, to consider this inner call as valid cent homiletical treatise by a Mennonite preacher prob­ even apart from the call of any congregation. Whether ably stated it correctly in the words, "So steht die Pre­ this development is to be welcomed may be debated. digt aber doch wieder auf demselben Boden, wie die While most Anabaptists rejected the charge of ille­ menschliche Rede überhaupt.”11 The sermon was human, gitimacy, some took it seriously, and these charges prob­ at best a tool which the Spirit could use for salvation ably muted the trumpets of a good many others. Obbe and the growth of the hearers. There was lacking the Philips left the brotherhood after having won Menno element of judgment which holds that each sermon Simons to the cause, because he lost the conviction of is a confrontation by the divine, and that failure to re­ being called of God. Hans de Ries, in the second gen­ spond brings guilt and judgment. The sermon was a eration, was under such pressure from his non-Mennonite witness of one brother before the others, of what God friend, Coornhert, that he stopped preaching altogether had done. These experiences confirmed the veracity for a time. The divisions among the brotherhood made of the biblical record. him doubt whether such a miserable body could be the As suggested earlier, all doctrine and theology was body of Christ. If not, he had no external call. And firmly subordinated to admonition. True faith, they Coornhert insisted that anyone who based his preaching believed, had to be manifest in a life of devotion and upon an inner call must be able to perform miracles as discipleship. Since they did know what God required Moses, Elijah, and Christ did. Since de Ries could not of them, the problem was not lack of knowledge but do miracles, he began to doubt his inner call as well. lack of obedience. Thus the function of the minister How does a minister receive assurance concerning the was to plead with his listeners, to urge them to re­ reliability of his inner feeling of being called? Coornhert pentance, to love, to joy, to peace. For a time, in fact, was right in saying that those who think they are called, the minister of the Lowlands and in Germany was ac­ but are not, are false prophets. tually called Venn au er (Vermahner), i.e., exhorter. The

JANUARY, 1962 23 justification for this emphasis upon admonition was incense a figure of his priestly office, the myrrh an in­ found in the Scriptures and the specific examples of the dication of his coming death.1- But he too insisted that apostles: "Therefore encourage one another, and build the minister must "mine the Scriptures as a clear well."111 one another up. . . . and we exhort you, brethren, H. G. Mannhardt, the famous nineteenth century Men- admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted . . nonite pastor in Danzig, has pointed out that the Ana­ (1 Thess. 5:11, 14); "Let the word of Christ dwell in baptists loved to use biblical stories as background for you richly, as you teach and admonish one another . . the sermons, illustrating the necessity of setting a good (Col. 3:16); "Preach the word, be urgent in season example—even as the biblical record showed.11 Even and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort . . .” more, I found them identifying themselves with the (2 Timothy 4:2). Other emphases on admonition are saints of biblical times in their attempt to restore the found in 1 Timothy 4:13; 6:2; and Titus 1:9. apostolic pattern. Menno Simons did this repeatedly. Exhortation has been the central motif of most Ana­ Now he speaks with David, with Ezra, with Paul, with baptist preaching. Except in the early years of the move­ Daniel. "I was as envious as Cain, proud and unchaste ment, the listeners usually consisted of believers. Dur­ as Sodom, unmerciful as Pharaoh. . . .”15 Very fre­ ing the first generation there were, naturally, many oc­ quently the reference is to suffering and the conclusion casions where inquirers were in the services, and there is stated, "We are no better than the saints who pre­ was a strong evangelistic emphasis. Nevertheless, the ceded us.”10 tremendous missionary outreach of Anabaptism did not The late W. J. Kühler of The Netherlands relates rest upon preaching but upon the personal and collective how he sat in his study late one Saturday night polishing witness on the highways and byways. It was probably his sermon without being satisfied with it. Before him this that earned for them the epitaphs "hedge preachers" on the wall hung a new picture of Menno Simons. It and "corner preachers" (Heckenprediger, Winkelpredi­ was past midnight, and Kühler was about to go home ger). The sermon was used to teach and exhort. Those when it seemed as though Menno started speaking to who remained disobedient were disciplined. The issues him. They talked about Kühlers sermon for the fol­ were posed in terms of the will. They were, of course, lowing morning. Menno asked about the text, to which Arminian. There was little pastoral counselling, though Kühler replied that he took a different approach since confession did occur from brother to brother. the times had changed and with them the needs of the While it is true that this emphasis upon exhortation, people. "What do you mean?” Menno asked, and with its inevitable moralistic precipice, may have been Killer replied: the result of a weak doctrine of grace on the part of Many are of the opinion that basic concerns can be some, with many it was the corollary of a deep under­ made most relevant by relating them to the events of the standing of the nature of conversion. Those who had day. They know that the congregation has little interest made their peace with God needed to verify their ex­ in theological questions, therefore they bring (into the perience through obedience. The primary teachers were sermon) almost everything that happens in the country the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit. The Christian life and around the world. Their sermons do become more consisted not so much in knowing as in believing and stimulating in that way . . . but whether souls are there­ doing. by won for the kingdom is another matter. Others try it with literature. A novel, a best seller becomes a ver­ itable fountain for the pulpit . . .ir The Use of the Bible "O spare me this rubbish," Menno interrupted him. With all this it must not be forgotten that most early "I do hope such sermons are not preached from our Anabaptists took the Bible seriously and literally. It pulpits." The Bible was clearly the primary sourcebook was the primary sourcebook for the minister. Lacking for many sixteenth-century Anabaptist preachers. lormal training, most of them did not spend much time An overwhelming impression gained from reading in exegesis; the text meant what it said. An exception the Anabaptist writings is that they did not read the were the spiritualizers, most of whom held to a literal Bible in order to find sermon material but in order to sense and an inner deeper sense of Scripture. For them find comfort and strength for themselves in the face the external Word remained cold and meaningless until of criticism and suffering. We know of the persecu­ the Spirit supplied the "key of David” within to unlock tion many suffered. We know less of the inner ten­ the deeper meanings. Except with the radicals, the sions and frustrations, but the minister’s lot among his deeper meanings never contradicted the written word but brethren was often hard, as we indicated in the discus­ went beyond it. sion of the priesthood of all believers. Flans de Ries, Some were allegorists. Dirk Philips tended to read one of the greatest after Menno Simons, was led to the Scriptures in this way. In discussing the coming write, for example: of the three wise men, e.g., it was clear to him that Who is able to charge us with the desire to become they illustrated the doctrine of the Trinity; the gold they masters? What authority do we have, your ministers brought was a figure of the power of Christ, the frank­ or I, among our congregations? We are no more than

24 MENNONITE LIFE poor servants and slaves of the people, not masters. the heritage of the Western world, and calling into ques­ Where can another people be found who, while carry­ tion structures of thought in a manner which makes us ing the Christian name, hold their ministers in less esteem continuingly grateful to them. In what did this pro­ than among the (Anabaptists), and where they have less phetic function lie? It lay in two dimensions of their authority and control? Must we not frequently yield life and thought. First, their conviction and proclama­ even to the least, giving place to folly for a time in order not to hurt the weak, and for the sake of peace?18 tion that the new age had already come in Christ was prophetic because it was eschatological, i.e., the future In this situation the Scriptures became a pillar of sup­ had broken into the present, making them citizens of port and source of peace beyond any other books. another world while still on earth. And secondly, lest The Anabaptist-Mennonite preaching orientation can we charge them with idealism and other-worldliness, this be characterized as follows. In the sixteenth century prophetic dimension lay in their insistence upon prac­ the basic strand was biblical. The sermon with its im­ tical Christianity. We are prophetic when we speak the agery and terminology centered upon the Bible. This Word of God relevantly within the situation rather than strand was modified in the seventeenth century, almost from beyond it ex cathedra. The early Anabaptists were to our own day, by the defense of orthodoxy in thought, convinced of the presence of the living Christ working dress, social relationships with the primary appeal being among and through them as his chosen people, not sim­ made not to the Scriptures but to tradition. In the eigh­ ply individually but collectively as a people of God. teenth century the intense devotion, and to some extent They were conscious of being this people of God, with the terminology', of Pietism became a part of the sermon. a message, and that the world stood in desperate need In the nineteenth century particularly in Europe, many of just that message. And, in the manner of true proph­ sermons echoed the milieu of theological liberalism. In ets they refused to be silenced. the twentieth century', after the Modernist-Fundamental­ Now it seems that these two dimensions provide the ist controversy, there was an increasing return to biblical only valid and completely adequate foundation for dy­ preaching, though not without a "paradox,” the need for namic preaching. Rather than deplore the lack of a what we call a "healthy tension” instead of the old Ana­ dynamic heritage of preaching, we may thank God for baptist either/or. this foundation upon which to build a tradition of pro­ There were many dynamic preachers after Menno phetic preaching commensurate with the needs of our and his contemporaries, and before the days of formal time. Preaching is much more than words. To preach seminary training among the Anabaptist-Mennonites, who means, as Paul said, to be "ambassadors for Christ, God affirmed the conviction that the charism is not so much making his appeal through us . . . to be reconciled to acquired as it is given. Our historical libraries contain God” (2 Corinthians 5:17-20). No one will deny the thousands of sermons by later preachers, from the sev­ need for reconciliation in our alienated age. enteenth century to the present. They offer a unique insight, little explored thus far, into the minds of our So we do have a rich heritage and a message as am­ lathers. There exist in these books of sermons treasure bassadors, and we are surrounded by a tremendous need. stores worthy of exploration. Was there ever a time more challenging to the young man who has heard the call of God to speak for him? We have been saying that Anabaptism was not noted for dynamic preaching, and that the movement was not Let us then arise to our prophetic calling as servants spread significantly through the pulpit ministry. This of the Word. Let us take our place beside the faithful laity, and by the grace of God, consent to lead them was, in a way, the logical outcome of their doctrine of the church. Within the church were believers only, and in their priesthood. As victors, not as victims of our all of them were called to be priests. When they de­ time, let us announce again and again that the new age fined this priesthood as "for others” instead of simply has broken in, a fact which our generation finds so hard to believe. for themselves as Luther did, they found themselves branded as illegitimate and false prophets. Frequently their continuing zeal led to their death at the stake or in the rivers. We have emphasized the sermon, given primarily before believers, as witness, as exhortation, and !N. van der Zijpp, "225 jaar Seminarie,” Stemmen uit de as biblical. Far from exhausting the subject, this brief Doopsgezhtde broederschap, Jaargang 10, Nr. 1 (Assen: Van analysis merely constructs a skeleton around which fur­ Gorcum & Company, 1961 ), 5-23. ther monographs can be erected. -Martin Luther, "Treatise to the German Nobility," Three Treatises (Philadelphia: The Muhlenberg Press, 1943), 14-15. A word may be said in conclusion about the use of 3Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, Vol. I, the term "prophetic.” If it is true that the Anabaptist edited by Leonard von Muralt and Walter Schmidt (Zürich: sermon, apart from the spiritualists, was not prophetic S. Hirzel, 1952), Nos. 203, 204. according to general usage of the term, it must still be 'Ibid., Nos. 13, 18. •'■Menno Simons, Opera Omnia, pp. 441-442. said that, collectively', Anabaptism was prophetic indeed, ''■Ibid., p. 223. anticipating many of the values which today have become "Ibid., p. 440.

JANUARY, 1962 25 ^Wilhelm Pauck, "The Ministry in the Time of the Continen­ tal Reformation,” The Ministry in Historical Perspectives, H. R. Niebuhr and Daniel Day Williams (ed.) (New York: Harpers, 1956), p. 131. '■'Ibid., p. 134. 101 \yA, Vol. 43, p. 381:1. For Calvin see Institutes IV, 3:2. ” J. G. Wiens, Homiletik. (Winnipeg: The Christian Press, 1939), p. 9- >-J. Hartog, Geschiedenis van de predikkunde in de Protes- tantsche Kerk van Nederland (Utrecht: Kemink & Zoon, 1887), pp- 13 f- VAlbid., p. 20. J ,H. G. Mannhardt, "Geschichte der Predigt in den deutschen Mennonitengemeinden,” Mennonitiscbe Blätter, February 1, 15, March 1, 15, 1891- ,r'Menno Simons, Opera, p. 73. UiIbid., p. 81. 17W. J. Kühler, "Gesprek met Menno,” Doopsgezinde B'tjdra- gen (1905), p. 183. 1fiHans de Ries, Ontdeckinge der dwaithgen, p. 124.

A Modern Psalm By Elmer F. Sndennan

O Lord, our Lord, how marvelous are thy works: Take man, for instance. Thou hast put all things Under his feet. Not only the sheep And the oxen, the beasts of the field, The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea. They’re nothing now. When he looks at the heavens, the work of thy hands, He can see sputniks, the work of his hands, Spinning eighteen thousand miles an hour In their orbits thousands of miles above the earth. He dreams of space islands one thousand miles high As a bulwark against his foes From which to still his enemy and his avenger. How marvelous are man's works, O Lord! O Lord, our Lord, how marvelous are thy works: The moon and the stars which thou hast established. Yet they must soon be inferior to man's missile-stars, To his rockets aimed at the moon, His sputnik-moons equipped with radios Whose Morse code is many times more meaningful Than the ancient sound of the silent stars. How marvelous are man's works, O Lord! O Lord, our Lord, how marvelous are thy works: The moon and the stars which thou hast established. Yet the moons and the missiles of man Are equipped with warheads so powerful That it isn't important anymore Whether thou art mindful of man: He is able to take care of himself. How marvelous are man’s works, O Lord! We marvel at thy works, O Lord. Thou art an ever-present help In time of trouble, a shield against the foe, And a stronghold for the oppressed; Yet man is not impressed. He takes no chances He feels more secure with his missiles And hydrogen bombs than with thy rod of iron. How marvelous are man’s works, O Lord! O Lord, our Lord, we marvel at thy works, Not least of all at man. Thou hast given him dominion Over the works of thy hands. Thou has crowned him with glory and honor. Thou hast made him greater than thyself.

26 AAENNONITE LIFE The Nebraska Amish of Pennsylvania

By Maurice A. Mook

The Eleven Illustrations of the "Nebraska” Old Or­ Valley have been joined in Penn’s Valley by a few fami­ der Amish, based upon the art work of Luther F. Kepler, lies from other settlements who have come to feel in Jr., and his sister, Mrs. Anne K. Fisher, published in unity with the conservative beliefs and customs that have Mennonite Life, entitled "The Nebraska Old Order Am­ been consistently characteristic of the Nebraska Amish ish,” have already elicited a considerable commentary and in Big Valley ever since their origin. The "mother” quite a few questions. The purpose of the present article colony of the Penn's Valley Amish community is the is to try to answer some of the questions that have been Mifflin County Nebraska Amish group, which has never asked. been composed of more than two congregations whose The questions most frequently asked are these: (1) members now live in the eastern end of Big Valley. To How did some of the Amish people in Pennsylvania come the history of the Amish in Big Valley, we may now turn. to be called the "Nebraska” Amish? (2) How do the Nebraska Amish differ from Amish elsewhere? and (3) Big Valley Are the pictures accurately illustrative of Amish life? Readers should perhaps be informed tht Big Valley The question most frequently asked relating to the last- will not be found on most maps of Pennsylvania. The question is: Do the Amish wear their hair as long as is official name of this valley is the Kishacoquillas Valley. shown in these pictures? The answer is that the Nebras­ But, fortunately for most persons who would try to pro­ ka Amish, unlike most other Amish, wear their hair to nounce the Indian name, the valley is known to all Amish- the shoulders. The pictures are accurate in this particu­ men and to most central Pennsylvanians as Big Valley. lar, and it may also be said that they are equally accurate This valley, about four miles wide and thirty miles long, in all aspects of Amish life here represented. Mrs. Fisher extends across Mifflin County in a southwest-northeast and Mr. Kepler are life-long residents of the Nebraska direction. It is bounded by Stone Mountain to the north­ Amish area in Pennsylvania, and their sketches and paint­ west and Jack's Mountain to the southeast. Mifflin Coun­ ings accurately, as well as sympathetically, represent the ty lies immediately southeast of Centre County, which, people they portray. It may also be added that hair-worn- as its name suggests, is the central county in the state. to-the-shoulders is as characteristic of Nebraska Amish The majority of the inhabitants of Big Valley are of children as it is of their elders, as is faithfully shown in Pennsylvania German derivation, and the majority of Luther Kepler’s charcoal sketch and as is vividly shown those of German descent are of Mennonite or of Amish by Mrs. Fisher’s pastel painting.'1 Mennonite persuasion. Nebraska Amish and Old Order Amish The questions relating to the origin of the name "Ne­ "Dirty Reuben” by Anne Kepler Fisher (pen and ink). braska Amish," and to the differences between the Ne­ braska Amish and other Amish, may be best answered by briefly considering the history of Amish congregations in central Pennsylvania. It should first of all be pointed out that "Nebraska Amish” is not synonymous with "Old Order Amish” in Pennsylvania. There are eleven Old Order Amish communities in the Keystone State at the present time, only two of which have Nebraska Amish inhabitants. Both of these are neighboring communities in central Pennsylvania, and one of these settlements de­ rives from the other. The recently-established Amish colony in Penn’s Valley in eastern Centre County was begun by Nebraska Amish migrants from Big Valley in Mifflin County. These original colonists from Big

"The Bread Winners" (Detail) by Luther F. Kepler, Jr. (oil paint inf-).

JANUARY, 1962 27 Amish Mennonites have inhabited Big Valley since the King church by a process of intensifying the early- the early 1790's. The present Big Valley Amish com­ established conservatism of the King group, it is fair munity, including all Amish churches, is the second larg­ to say that the Nebraska Amish originated in fact, if est and the third oldest Old Order Amish settlement in not in name, as early as 1850. the commonwealth. The Lancaster and Somerset county The next division among the Amish of Big Valley settlements are older, having been established in 1714 occurred between the Upper and Middle districts of the and in the 1760’s respectively, but only the Lancaster original church. Bishop Solomon Byler of the Middle County group is now larger in size. Even more inter­ District was a man of more liberal views than was Bishop esting and significant is the fact that the Big Valley com­ Abraham Peachey of the Upper District. There devel­ munity exhibits the widest range of differences in customs oped differences between them (as to the manner of bap­ to be found in any local settlement of Old Order Amish tism, for one thing), and these differences grew until in existence today. Although other Amish groups are Bishop Byler and the members who agreed with him sometimes said to be more conservative, none in existence separated their fellowship from the Peachey church in at the present time is more conservative than the Nebras­ 1863- They erected a church building in 1868, which ka Amish of Big Valley. Samuel W. Peachey, who was was the origin of the Maple Grove Mennonite Church himself an Amishman, is as right in 1962 as he was in located in a small grove of maple trees about a mile east 1930 when he characterized the "Nebraska society (as) of Belleville in the center of Big Valley. This church the strictest order of all (Amish) religious bodies.”2 is now affiliated with the Allegheny Conference of the It is doubtful also that there are more ’progressive’ Old Mennonite Church.'1 Order Amish to be found than those of the present Big This liberal movement among the Byler people led Valley Speicher Amish Church, whose members during Bishop Shem Yoder of the Lower District or King church the past several years have come to accept electric lights, to take a still more conservative stand than had been the use of tractors in the field, automobiles, and other previously held. The members of his church began to historically non-Amish and "worldly” practices. Whether let their hair grow longer, and they gradually adopted or not they should now be regarded as "Old Order” other practices which further removed them from the Amish may be a moot question. They still, however, other Amish of the Valley. The Shem Yoder church, hold their worship services in the homes of individual due to its consistently conservative practices, came to be members of the church. They are classified as "Beachy” called the "Old School” church. The Big Valley Amish Amish in several recent references to them in print.:1 people thus were divided into three separate churches, each lacking fellowship with the others, by the latter Origin of Nebraska Amish part of the last century. Such differences in local Amish customs and beliefs as we now find in Big Valley are due to divisions which have plagued the Amish people of central Pennsylvania The Name "Nebraska Amish" (as well as elsewhere) for more than a century. The In 1880 a further division developed in the "Old original Big Valley Amish group, begun in the 1790’s, School” church. It is reported that the trouble began grew in size until by the 1840’s the church included three between two men in a dispute over clover seed. It is districts, which were divided, as is usual among the particularly difficult, at this late date, to discern the causes Amish, on a purely numerical and geographical basis. of early Amish divisions, and it is now impossible to The Upper District church had Abraham ("Abram”) determine the precipitating cause of this Old School Peachey as its bishop at this time, the Middle District schism. At any rate, we may accept Peachey's matter-of- was in the care of Bishop Solomon Beiler (soon spelled fact statement that "a serious dissension broke out among Byler in central and western Pennsylvania and in the them which resulted in a split.” Members of the church middle west), while the Lower District had two bishops, look sides with the parties of the original argument, and "Long” Christian Zook and Shem Yoder. In 1850 the the conflict grew increasingly serious. The issue came Lower Church separated from the other two districts, a to be complicated by such matters as the length of men’s factor in this separation being the Lower District’s sym­ hair, the color of buggy tops, the type of material to be pathy for Bishop Samuel King, who had earlier been used in Amish clothing, etc. When it seemed that the relieved of his bishop’s duties, allegedly on account of problem could not be settled among themselves, Bishop his opposition to the use of rubber tires on Amish Yost Yoder of Nebraska was asked to come to Big Valley buggies. Bishops Zook and Yoder welcomed Samuel to help settle the issue. Bishop Yoder, a man of ex­ King to the fellowship of the Lower District church, and, tremely conservative views, failed to effect harmony. Those although Samuel King never resumed the full duties of who accepted his conservative viewpoint withdrew from the bishop’s office in the Lower Church, the group came the Old School group, and their descendants have ever to be called the Samuel King church and was so known since been called the "Nebraska Amish.” Their name for a number of years. Inasmuch as the group that later thus derives from the state in which one of their leaders came to be called the Nebraska Amish developed from once resided.

28 MENNONITE LIFE State College <=■»” * c o u M s a a g # * ' * i — Mifflin County .SNYDER Pennsylvania

Scnle of Miles 1 2 3 4 5 1.0

H ^ t-*•Belleville ** litfsto^V Locust CroveJCAM)jPB^ 1^ , le < TiyiRVanV' L^S*®5»*. > Rockville ChHpel (MC)?*' ^ J £ ePno?lCe \ ... V « . - M r . £ S c h o o 1 'VAlff* .=* *£r~ «■» V A 1 le n sv i1le ^MC)+ A1 ^ O U N T Y

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Eifilit districts of Amish live interspersed with Mennonites Aren occupied by M ennonites nnd Amish (Ki shncoqui 1 Ins or "Biu" Vnlley)

Above, Mifflin County, Pa., Kishacoquillas or "Big” Valley in which the Nebraska Amish and other Amish and Mennonites live. (Cut courtesy Mennonite Encyclopedia) Above left, "Aaron” by Anne Kepler Bisher (pastel). Left, "Adam” by Luther F. Kepler. Jr. (oil).

over how far a roof should extend over the gable end walls of an Amish building. Tradition now has it that a Nebraska Amishman bought a farm and that some felt that the farmhouse had a roof which extended too far beyond the house walls at the gable ends. Some insisted these roof extensions should be shortened, while others felt that it should not be necessary to do so. Luther Kepler’s oil painting "Back From the Mill” shows the The name "Nebraska” among both the Amish and their type of short roof extension which the more conservative non-Amish neighbors has long since lost is geographical Nebraska Amish now favor/’ The issue, again conso­ and has acquired a typological meaning. It labels the nant with other attitudinal differences, split the Nebraska most conservative group of Old Order Amish to be found church. Named after the last names of their bishops, in Pennsylvania. Indeed, it may be claimed that in their one faction became the Zook church and the other the attitudes and in most of their practices the Nebraska Yoder church. These groups continue to the present time, Amish are among the most conservative Old Order with the Zook church having an approximate membership Amish to be met with anywhere at the present time. In of ninety and the Yoder church some seventy members in the total range of Old Order Amish variation, from most 1960.“ These two churches are neither in fellowship with conservative to most liberal, the Old Order group most each other nor with any other Amish congregation in like the Nebraska Amish of Pennsylvania in the conserva­ Big Valley; their normal complement of ministers, there­ tive cast of their way of life would be the Swartzentruber fore, includes two bishops for each group, so that an Amish churches in cast-central Ohio. outside functionary need not be called in to oversee the ordination of a new bishop in case of a vacancy. The Amish Divisions address of the ministers of both Nebraska Amish churches There were, thus, by the 1880’s four Amish churches is Reedsville, Pennsylvania, a town in the northeastern in Big Valley—tiie Church Amish, the Peachey Church, corner of Big Valley. the Old School People, and the Nebraskas. There were The other Amish churches in Big Valley now center subsequent divisions in both the Peachey and Church in the middle and southern reaches of the valley, with Amish people, as well as yet another separation among the addresses of their ministers being either Belleville the Nebraskas, to which latter we may now turn. In or Allensville, Pennsylvania. There are at the present the early 1930’s there developed a dispute among them time four Mennonite churches and five Old Order Amish JANUARY, 1962 29 churches in the Valley. Each Mennonite church in this Penn's Valley Nebraska Amish community will be a happy area has derived from the Old Order Amish. The Men­ and successful venture in its new location. It is in a beau­ nonite churches enumerated approximately 1,100 and tiful valley of gently-rolling countryside, overhung, as the Old Order congregations were ascribed about 600 is Big Valley, by two heavenward aspiring mountain members in 1957.7 The here-offered estimates subtract ranges—an appropriately isolated home for another com­ the membership of the Mattawana church, which is in munity of die Stillen im Lande. Mifflin County but not in Big Valley. But at the same time, one may perhaps be permitted to observe that as one surveys the foregoing story, Venn’s Valley the general pattern of which has been repeated in Old The latest episode in the history of the Big Valley Order Amish history throughout the nation, it becomes easily obvious that little things can be big things to the Nebraska Amish has occurred within the last several members of small groups. For it has been little issues years. A dozen or so Big Valley Nebraska Amish fami­ lies have recently crossed the northern mountain bound­ which have divided the Amish people of Big Valley. ary of Big Valley and settled in neighboring Penn’s Val­ It is also inescapably evident that the idea that whatever ley in easternmost Centre County. This new Nebraska is old is always best has been an overriding motivation church has two resident ministers and is listed as having underlying the lifeways and the thoughtways of the Ne­ twenty-three members in 1960.K I have been unable to braska Amish people. determine definitely the cause of this recent removal of 'Mennonite Lije. April, 1961, bottom page 127. Nebraska Amish families from Big Valley to Centre Coun­ -Samuel W. Peachey, Amish oj Kishacoquillas Valley, Mifflin ty. All of the families are from the Zook, rather than County, Pa., Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1930, p. 33. from the Yoder, branch of the Nebraska group. The '•'•Mennonite Encyclopedia, Volume III, 1957, p. 684. removal does not seem to have been due to "church •'Mennonite Year Book, I960, p. 71; Mennonite Encyclopedia, trouble" (as the Amish themselves call it) in Big Vol. HI, p. 474. r'See Luther Kepler’s painting, "Back from the Mill," Menno- Valley. The County Agricultural Agent of Mifflin nite Life, July, 1961, p. 122. County, who speaks the Pennsylvania German dialect and "Mennonite Year Book, I960, p. 98. who has an understanding relationship with certain fami­ 7Mennonite Encyclopedia, Volume III, p. 684. lies in both Nebraska Amish churches of Big Valley, * Mennonite Year Book, I960, p. 98. assures me that the reason for the removal is the scarci­ '•'Paul M. Dubbs, "Where to Go and Place-Names of Centre County,” State College, Pennsylvania. The Centre Daily Times, ty of farms available to Amish families in Mifflin County. 1961, p. 71. The problem of securing farms for young Amishmen is a serious problem in most Amish communities today; it may, in fact, be said to be perhaps the most pressing problem confronting the Amish at the present time wher­ The Amish Buggy Horse ever they are located. The suggestion that the cause of this removal is an economic one rather than a function of "church trouble" at home is consonant with two By Warren Kite wer conditions: that all of the members of the new Penn’s Valley community derive from the larger Nebraska con­ For shame, right here before the meetinghouse gregation in Big Valley; and that the new community is To strut and pose between the chaste black shafts As though to prance were worshipful enough, under the oversight of the bishop of the Zook church in As though he were the handiwork of God; Big Valley. If the removal were due to a division in the Big Valley congregation, the bishop of this congre­ So scattering foam on gravel and gatepost The sorrel kicks loose stones at dash and whiffle, gation would not have oversight of the new community. Flares his red nostrils that snort back the dust The address of the ministers and members of the new Of his own hoofs, cocks his taut ears erect, congregation in Penn’s Valley is Aaronsburg, Pennsyl­ And plumes his tail upright so that they bob vania. This town of some 450 residents is one of the And sway in rhythm to his singlefoot. And then his screams, replying to the smells oldest towns in Centre County, having been laid out by Of docile mares along the hitching rail. Jewish Aaron Levy in 1786. Levy provided for a wide main street, hoping that his community, located so close Are answered by the hand that whips a crack And whistle, by the hoarse black beard that murmurs, to the geographical center of Pennsylvania, would one "Nu, whoa da, Bubely.” Thus, red heat of horse day become the capital of the Commonwealth. This it And the quick fetlocks halt before the rail. never did. It did, however, in 19-19 become the focus Now nothing glitters but the snaffle bit of "The Aaronsburg Story,” which consisted of a pageant And hames where leather burnishes bare steel, depicting the ideal of "Living Above Prejudice.’’'1 We The horse tied and with tugs loose harnessed black may at least hope that such an ideal of inter-group co­ From crown to crupper, rein to singletree. operation will be realized, and that the newly-established Copyright © 1961 by Warren Kliewer. All rights reserved.

30 MENNONITE LIFE COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE PRACTICES OF LANCASTER MENNONITES

By Aaron Martin*

As in th e case of many other religious groups, the Lancaster community. For several summers the youth courtship and marriage practices among the Lancaster group of one church grew an acre of tomatoes. The profit County Mennonites are governed largely by tradition and was given to the mission board. It was at these weekly the discipline of the church. The customs described here tomato pickings that the young people really enjoyed deal mostly with the period after World War II and themselves. They could associate with many people all represent the findings of personal experience and the in one evening in a matter of several hours. teaching of the church. There are times when the youth group would help a farmer husk his corn, harvest his tobacco, and help with Acquaintance the chores when illness or an emergency arose among the There are many opportunities for associations of boys brotherhood. Girls usually do a good job when working and girls in activities such as young people’s meetings, alongside the boys. After an evening of work, the church services, Christian workers group activities, and group gathers for refreshments, singing, and exchanging young people’s gatherings in homes of friends. These jokes. associations help the young people to become acquainted with each other. They learn to know the strong and weak Courting characteristics of those with whom they associate. It is right for a youth to seek a partner. Marriage is "Mennonite boys should be interested in girls who can an institution ordained of God. One is expected to hold cook plain, wholesome food, and mend stockings. After all, you boys should care a great deal about the ability very high standards while getting acquainted with a young person of the opposite sex. Spending time with a mem­ of your girl friends to do practical jobs well.”1 Thus ber of the opposite sex is not for pleasure but for a the bishops advise the Lancaster County Mennonite men. serious purpose—that is whether this person is the one The young people are not expected, in fact forbidden, the Lord intended for him or her to have through life. " .. . to indulge in the world’s methods of pleasure seek­ During this time one should not do things to please the ing, amusements and entertainments, patronizing or tak­ flesh. Young people should consider in a prayerful ing part in fairs, parades, circuses, moving picture shows, way their relationship to each other and particularly to theaters, public resorts, regularly organized contesting God. Good and right associations are not only normal ball teams, dancing, card parties, various forms of gamb­ but strengthen character. ling, and such like.”- Life is much like a race, and one There is no rule stating at what age young people may run it with a divided or undivided heart. The church should start to court. It is suggested that at the age of seeks to help the young people to have an undivided heart. eighteen one still has plenty of time to find a partner. If one participates in any of the above mentioned, it is One does not usually start courting anyone until he or she the feeling that he or she is dividing his or her heart be­ has received permission from the parents. Most young tween the Lord and the world. people start dating in groups. Usually the question is For wholesome entertainment, the young folk partici­ asked, "Where are we going tonight?” pate in the many church activities. It is believed that one can find great pleasure in various activities in the youth Most couples go to an evening church service. After groups. These include summer projects, street meetings, the church service, there is no better place to have a visiting the sick, helping a brother with his farm work, good time than at home. There they listen to records, singing groups, or testimonial meetings. The writer can play table tennis, badminton, croquet, enjoy good music well remember an inspiring project while living in the (religious) and sing around the piano. Sometimes a couple wants to date alone. However this is usually not the case for young dates. If a couple is alone, various *1 was born and have lived among the Mennonites of Lancaster questions are raised by the other young people as well County for a number of years and have participated in weddings as by the parents. there, as well as courting and later marrying a Lancaster County Mennonite girl. Hence, the writer feels that he can give some It is a well-known fact that people usually choose a firsthand information on the subject. life companion from those with whom they associate. In

JANUARY, 1962 31 addition, there are certain things one should not ignore, will date a large number of girls. In this case it is hard but observe. "As a Christian you have no right to assume for him to find a partner because no girl wants him due any other attitude than that of the Christian man or to the fact that he acted so unsettled. woman, pure, chaste, upright in character, worthy of the When the time comes for a couple to go "steady,” they best. . . . Courtship with curtains drawn, lights dimmed in usually start to spend time by themselves. They will con­ the late hours of the night, especially with those of the tinue to double or triple date, but only occasionally. They opposite sex whose morals are questionable, should never usually go to church and come back to her home to spend be countenanced by Christian young people.”3 the remaining time together expressing their thoughts to Conversation during the dating time varies from the each other. During this time groups of "scouters" (young involvements of the day to church affairs. One is made men) attempt to lure the girl away from her boy friend. conscious of the fact that God is watching, listening and To do this they will come into the house, sit around on knows what is going on even if no one else may see you. the floor, look at magazines, listen to records the couple Affections are seldom expressed until the participants does not want to hear, ask for something to eat, and know each other well. The reason for this is that someday sometimes play games. Many times the scouters do not they will want to look back to the days of courtship with­ leave until they are fed some of the cake and ice cream out regrets. made for the boy friend. While the scouters are eating, It is suggested that couples do not keep late hours in they will make remarks about her baking that are usually their courtship practices. There is much Sunday afternoon over complimentary. When they leave, sometimes one of dating, which is looked upon with favor by the church the young men will be bold enough to ask her for a date. fathers. However, there are couples who keep late hours This usualy angers her boy friend. But this is the fun of on Saturday and Sunday nights. the scouters. It is required that one dates only those within the con­ Scouters have many other activities. Their activities ference. If one dates persons outside the conference, he may include window peeping, "fixin' ” her boy friend’s is subject to censure. The bishops are usually reasonably car so it won’t start, visiting with her father from the firm on this issue. Hence, there is little deviation by the bedroom window, and just being a general nuisance for young people. However, one must hasten to say that the couple. there are exceptions to this rule. It is the practice for a young man to call on a girl in Engagement person. He usually goes to see her some evening during the week to seek permission for a date. There are several After young people have courted each other for some reasons for this. The young man usually likes to meet the time, it is quite natural that they should consider en­ girl’s father and mother and observe their reaction to gagement. The couple by this time is overly conscious his presence. Further he calls to see the home environ­ of this very important step. They are now at the place ment firsthand. There is a saying to the effect that the where they are considering marriage. Before an en­ daughter will act very' much as the mother does in the gagement is actually announced, there is usually much home. Hence, meeting the girl’s mother is usually one prayer and discussion by the couple. The couple, in of the young man’s early goals. Modern means of com­ many cases, talk to their parents about the thought at munication, such as the telephone, are seldom used. hand before any final decisions are made. At the time Several things have taken place before the time for of proposing there are a number of questions that are the date on Sunday evening. The boy shines his car raised before the engagement is finally made, such as: till it sparkles, dresses his best, and usually notifies his "Do you know whether your friend has a real Christian close buddies who his "big” date is for Sunday night. On experience and has found reality in prayer? Have you the other hand, the girl probably cleans the living room prayed alone and together about the marriage you are three times, bakes a cake and makes sure there is ice planning? Have you talked about setting aside a certain cream, attempts to look her best, places the "welcome” time each day for Bible reading and prayer together? Are mat, and tells her close friends who her "big” date is for you members of the same church?”1 Sunday night. "Be sure to get a good look at him in When the couple has made the final decision, the next church.” step is to announce the engagement. The girl usually in­ It is tradition for the young sister to feed her date be­ forms her mother early the following day. The boy in­ fore he begins the trip home. While he is enjoying forms his father while doing the morning chores or the cake, she eagerly awaits his remarks about her baking. perhaps at the breakfast table. It is tradition for the If the remarks are good, he can be sure of good cake and couple to turn their watches under their wrist. That is, delicious home-made ice cream practically every time he the face of the watch is turned to the inside of the arm. comes to see her. It will be her ambition to have some There is no diamond, because this is not allowed. The ready whenever he places his feet on the "welcome” mat. young man may get his bride-to-be a large "hope chest” Many persons find their partner after courting one or (cedar chest) for her to fill with various linens until two times. There are extreme cases where a young man they get married. There is no announcement placed in

32 MENNONITE LIFE the local newspaper, because this is a worldly practice. The young bride makes her own wedding dress. Tra­ However the girl’s parents usually have a large Sunday ditionally, it is not seen by the groom until the wedding dinner inviting relatives and friends. The young couple day. The bride takes great pains in trying to make the are the honored guests. The girl’s father proudly an­ dress fit perfectly. It is styled like any other good dress nounces that his daughter is planning to marry this cer­ she has, but this one is white. tain young man "in due time.” After this, news of the engagement moves rapidly by word of mouth among the friends. Preparing for the Wedding Before this large Sunday dinner takes place, the young After a four to six-months period of engagement, the man usually makes a special trip to see the girl’s father. couple will spend many evenings together making a list This is done shortly after the parents are informed of of names of friends and relatives to be invited to the wed­ the engagement. The purpose of the trip is to receive ding. When the list is completed, it may contain several permission from the girl’s father to have her for his wife. hundred names. In most cases the parents will want to Many a young man dreads this moment, but he goes add some close friends or business associates. It would through with it. When the father gives consent, the be a great insult to the parents if they were not asked to daughter kisses her father and then makes the first pub­ suggest some names for invitations. lic embracement with her husband-to-be. Printed wedding invitations are commonly used. They For several weeks, sometimes months after the an­ are addressed and sent by the couple. Every relative, nouncement, couples tend to travel together, have parties, close and relatively distant, as well as friends, is invited to and discuss future plans together. Sometimes two couples the wedding. Only close relatives and friends are in­ will go on an all-day trip to places of interest. Occa­ vited to the reception. sionally two couples will go for a week-end trip to a A wedding is a very special occasion in the home of church conference or some distant mission station. the bride, especially if she is the only daughter. The A close friend of the couple will invite a large group bride’s parents go to great extremes in preparing for the of friends and have a surprise "kitchen” shower. The wedding. Most of the work takes place in the home. more surprised the showered couple is, the more fun it is First, a good, general housecleaning takes place. Secondly, for everybody. Usually the engaged couple attempt to all the woodwork is painted, usually white. Thirdly, the make certain they are not surprised, but they fail. The living room furniture is re-covered or sometimes re­ shower of gifts vary from "what-nots” to "foolers.” A placed by new furniture. The living room is usually re­ "fooler” is a large, neatly-wrapped gift with nothing in papered. it but perhaps a button. Sometimes it takes a couple The bride’s father takes great pains to see that his barns fifteen minutes to unwrap a "fooler.” Naturally the are in "ship shape” for the occasion. His livestock must couple will receive such gifts as baby bottles, nipples, look their best. Every piece of machinery must be in rolling pin, and a cookbook. Other gifts are dishes, working condition and arranged neatly in the shed. The glasses, silverware, cutlery, stainless steel pots and pans, Lancaster County farmer takes great pride in the way his sugar, flour, salt, pepper, tin can products, glass jar possessions appear when his friends and relatives come products, and many other items. After the gifts are un­ to the wedding. He wants to be known as a thrifty, good wrapped, the young people play games and later eat. farmer. The couple has many plans to make before the wedding As a first step in the church, the couple will submit day. First they see the bride’s bishop. The bishop gives to an examination by the bishop of the bride’s district. consent for the date the couple has set. The bishop also The couple will also make sure that he does not have questions the couple as to whether their courtship is pure any other engagement on that day. This is because no and Christian. He will attempt to see to it that they other bishop may marry the couple unless he approves. are meeting the requirements of the church discipline and This particular matter is attended to early to avoid em­ asks that they have their wedding in an orderly and barrassment. Christian manner. After the couple has received approval from the bishop The couple must select their attendants and what they for a certain day, they must go to see the deacon. They should wear. Some weddings have many attendants, want to make certain that the church is available on that while others have few. The bridal party usually consists day. They will not go to see the deacon if the wedding of close friends of the couple. is to be held in the bride's home. A number of marriages The couple must decide where they are going to live take place at the home of the bishop. Some marriages when they return from their honeymoon. They start take place at the home of the bride; quite a number are asking among their relatives for a place to live when conducted in the church where the bride is a member. they get married. Often they locate with an uncle, cousin The young people also need to know that in prepara­ or some other relative. In many cases the newlyweds tion for the wedding a number of states, including Penn­ do not live at her home or his home for the first several sylvania, require that the bride and groom have a physical months of marriage. examination by a medical doctor previous to their applica-

JANUARY, 1 9 6 2 33 Quartets art popular at weddings.

"Just married’’ i>i Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Unwrapping the wedding gifts.

Another couple "just married.”

Cutting the wedding cake in Lancaster. The kichen staff and the young people.

34 MENNONITE LIFE tion for a marriage license. After this is secured, young people can make application at the county courthouse and through a local notary public or justice of the peace secure a license to marry.

Wedding The wedding day is a sacred day. The wedding is con­ ducted in such a way that the couple can look back to it with satisfaction. The bishop board expects the couple to adhere to certain regulations and suggestions that apply to a Christian wedding. The attire of the bride and groom, as well as of the attendants, is not different in design and pattern from that which is required by the discipline of the church for faithful membership. The same requirements that are held forth for baptismal applicants and faithful commu­ Many wedding guests require a large st.ijf oj willing helpers. nicants obtain in regard to those who wish to be married. It is not modest to do otherwise. Corsages are not al­ lowed, whether the wedding is held in the home or the other. The couple then walk to the back of the church. church. No flowers at all are allowed in the church. The Then everyone shakes their hands and greets them. The carrying of the white Bible is discouraged. The use of parents of the couple are the first to greet them after streamers is not permitted under any circumstances, as it is they are married. The whole service usually lasts from felt this is a useless and worldly practice which does not two to two-and-a-half hours. become the people of God. "Flower girls, junior brides­ After the wedding all the invited guests go to the maids, and ring bearers are not in keeping with simplicity bride’s home, groom’s home, or maybe the local fire hall. and, therefore, are not allowed."n The wedding party sits at an elevated table so that they Congregational singing is used in the church wedding can be seen. In many cases two or three hundred guests when any singing is desired. No special singing, that is, have been invited to the reception. This is a grand and quartet, duet, etc., is allowed in any church wedding. happy occasion. Under no circumstances can instrumental music be used. The meal is always elaborate, cooked by the bride's The bride and her attendants and the groom and his aunts or some close friends of the couple. It seems there attendants walk into the auditorium at the most conveni­ is no end to forthcoming foods of seven sweets and seven ent place. Wedding marches are not allowed. After the sours. The reception will take about an hour and a half couple and their attendants are in the auditorium, the to two hours. whole party sits on the front benches. The bride and her The gifts are opened after the reception by the couple attendants sit on one side of the middle aisle. The groom or the gift receivers and put on display. The gift the and his attendants sit on the other side of the middle bride receives from the groom is placed where everyone aisle. After the wedding party is seated, the bride’s will see it. minister comes to the pulpit and has a formal opening While people are looking at the gifts, everyone visits with Scripture and prayer similar to any regular church with one another. The men usually congregate and talk service. He then makes some suggestions and comments about their farming and sometimes smoke cigars. The to the couple and everyone who attends. women admire the beautiful gifts and chat about house It is the custom for the bishops of both the bride and work. The young people and couples play games out- the groom to invite the congregations where they have „side if weather permits. Otherwise they use the barn their membership. This is announced the Sunday before floor, which has been cleaned for that purpose. There the wedding. It is traditional for the groom’s minister is usually little throwing of rice and confetti, decorating to deliver a fifteen or twenty-minute message before the the car and various worldly practices. It is not unusual groom’s bishop delivers a twenty or thirty-minute message. for a wedding to last a whole day. After these messages the bride’s bishop goes through the ceremonial vows with the couple, asking the people if there are any reasons why this couple should not be married. 1 Board of Bishops. Christian Weddings und Happy Homes. Lan­ The couple kneel in front of the bishop and repeat caster: Board of Bishops of the Lancaster Mennonite Con­ ference, 1951. the marriage vows. While the couple is kneeling, the -Statement of Christian Doctrine and Rules and Discipline of people in the congregation stand. To seal the vows, the Mennonite Church—Lancaster Conference. the bishop prays a special prayer for the couple. After ■'Board of Bishops, . . . p. 9- 'Ibid., p. 13. the prayer the couple rises, embrace and kiss each r'lhid., p p . 2 0 - 2 2 .

JANUARY, 1962 35 Heudrika Akke van Dorssen or Rixt THE GOLDEN

KNIGHT By Mrs. Paul Bender

A t P en teco st time she came vacationing to the Dutch intensity, communicating both her poetry and herself to Brotherhood House Heerewegen in Zeist. I saw her us. Keen insights and feelings were expressed with first on the evening of her arrival. White-haired and lyric beauty. queenly, she was sitting at the center table of our living This unforgettable experience brought a regret that room talking absorbedly over a book with another guest. Frisian poetry is little known outside Friesland. This Even a casual glance gave the impression that she was feeling engendered a plan. The author of the poems more than an ordinary person. welcomed the suggestion of having some of her verses On Pentecost she happened to be walking in front of and their translations published. Memorable hours were us on our way to the Zeist Mennonite Church. She and spent with her in selecting appropriate texts and in pre­ a young ministerial student, Jan Oldekamp, were having paring them for English-speaking readers. This was an earnest conversation. In the quiet church she joined made possible by her knowledge of English. in the worship. Without leaning against the back of her One day early in our association she handed me a chair, she intently followed the sermon of W. Mesdag. book with a rich blue-green cover, decorated only with On Monday morning I saw her again. After breakfast, a golden motif and with the following words along its according to the Dutch custom in the brotherhood houses, spine: De Gouclen Rider. Fersen fan Rixt. The ap­ she came jauntily into the kitchen, found a teatowel, pearance of the book suggested a sensitive, vigorous- and began taking her turn with the washing of dishes. approach to life. I opened the book. She had auto­ Someone called attention to a group of girls in the graphed this gift volume for my husband and me and distance playing a ring game with rhythmic grace on the had inscribed a verse to I-Ieerewegen, signing with Rixt, green grass, arcked by Heerewegen’s stately trees. In for she was Rixt. quick response to the pleasant scene she transformed the This, her only published book, was given to the public- routine household task into a gala occasion. Following on her sixty-fifth birthday, September 27, 1952. That the lead of her deep, rich voice, soon the dishwashers the contents called for a second edition in 1953 and a were singing Dutch and Frisian folk songs. A bit later, third in 1954 by the Laverman Printer)' of Drachten, in the crowded kitchen, she was stepping rhythmically Friesland, emphasizes the enthusiastic response this book with the singing, her dishtowel keeping time. has enjoyed. Because Rixt understands many of life’s The mystery of her identity was solved for me when joys and its sorrows from having deeply experienced our director, A. van Gilse, told me that she was a them, and has made a positive adjustment to them, many Frisian poetess. Fie added that he had invited her to readers have given her thanks; and where she shakes a talk to all of us that evening and that she had consented rebuking finger at her portraits and at her mirror image to his invitation to tell about her work and to read some readers appreciate her honesty and her aspirations. We of her poetry. grow along with her because we find in her poems identi­ Near twilight we gathered in another living room, sit­ fication and inspiration. ting chair-to-chair in a double semi-circle. Mrs. van De Gouden Rider has seventy-two pages; its contents Gilse had charge of the evening. First she played a few are divided into three parts, giving the poetry written piano selections that set the mood for the poetess. Dur­ in the periods 1911-1921, 1922-1941, and 1942-1952 ing the music she sat in quiet meditation, a soft-colored respectively. Almost throughout there is a poem to a scarf draped over her shoulders. After she was intro­ page, printed in clear, black type. The pages please duced, she told us something of her life in Friesland, of the eye. her schooling, of living with her mother during her last To follow the contents of De Gouden Rider is to years. share vicariously in the vital experiences of a life ear­ She rose to read her poems. They were written in nestly and sensitively lived. These poems are warm, her native Frisian language. She read with warmth and forceful, deeply personal; and they are skilfully executed.

36 MENNONITE LIFE Rixt and the cynics are poles apart. For her, life has For some years she had felt that her work as poetess purpose and meaning. She is a Christian idealist and was done. But with joy she describes a renaissance: optimist, with a strong sense of responsibility. Her "In August 1957 we had a religious meeting at Barchem. purpose is expressed in these lines from " T is Later Than The evening of the seventh there was a lecture, The We Think,” page 66, De Gonden Rider. Primitives and Religion, and we listened to records with Each one is called to lead his own existence, Negro spirituals. It was overwhelming. I was deeply Unique in form and goal, in time and race; moved. Afterwards I went to my room, my dark broth­ And so I must reflect my noblest essence, ers singing in my heart. That night the poem (Negro High-minded and sincere—a crystal vase. Spirituals) was born . . . How happy I was!” Rixt Wcstra It is regrettable that translations always lose some in­ trinsic quality, but the following will help acquaint the Perhaps this delineation of her personal life—some­ readers of Mennonite Life with poetry that ennobles thing of an innovation in Frisian poetry, made it easy and inspires and envokes appreciation for its beauty. for her to assume a pen name. For she was the advance We owe a debt of gratitude to our Frisian sister, Hen­ guard of the Young Frisian Movement, part of the drika Akke van Dorssen, self-styled Rixt. Frisian literary renaissance, whose followers wrote in Dewey Wcstra of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has trans­ this new manner. E. Howard Harris, in his very read­ lated some Frisian poetry, including a large part of able book, The Lit era! me oj Trie si and (published by De Gonden Rider. He has given generous permission Van Gorcum, Assen, 1956), writes about an anthology, for the use of those poems accredited to him in this De nije nioarn, which gives some of the work of Frisian article. writers of this period. In writing about Rixt he terms her a lyricist. Another critic, G. Stuiveling, in He! hoek van nn (Today's Book) of October 1953 charac­ 'k Sil Foar Dy Sjonge terizes a number of her lyrics as "pure poetry” because k Sil foar dy sjonge as de jountiid komt, ol their universality, their timelessness, and their quality. wrald, libben, minsken swije, A number of her lyrics have been set to music, some to stiltme in wund’re wijing jowt more than one melody. Among these are De lysler wurden en melodije. (The Thrush), Joan (Evening), Y n’t wähl (In the Woods), and 'k Sil foar dy sjonge (I will Sing For ’k Sil foar dy sjonge as't lust’rjend hert You). siele stimme forstiet, An Italian writer, Giacomo Prampolini, has translated trillet tomiette de hertslach fan't swiet- and published some of her poetry, which he qualifies ludich songene Iiet. as "exquisite.” In a radio broadcast from Groningen on January 2, 'k Sil foar dy sjonge! - de jountiid komt, 1953, F. Sierksma analyzed Rixt's poetry as "a dream twieljocht oer alles leit. . . . fulfilled" in contrast to the lost dreams of so many other yn us de klanken, yn us muzyk, writers. He compares her favorably to great poets of urn us de uneinichheit. The Netherlands and compares and contrasts her with our own Walt Whitman. He points out that she has -191-1 learned how to lose her life and find it. And through her poetry he sees that she has grown steadily through I Will Sing For You the years into a wise maturity. Central in her verses he finds truth, beauty, and goodness. I’ll sing for you at eventide G. Stuiveling characterizes Rixt’s work as unique in when life, . . . world, . . . all grows still. current Frisian literature and ventures the prophecy that The pregnant silence shall indite it will be unique for the entire century. Because of the the words and melody. quality of her poetry and the importance of her place in the Frisian literary world, in 1.953 Rixt was awarded I’ll sing for you! The list’ning heart the Gysbert Japicx-prize, the provincial prize for poetry. will hear the voice of soul, Rixt, Hendrika Akke van Dorssen, was born in the and answer to the living pulse Halbertsma village of Grouw in Friesland in 1887. She of thought and harmony. is a Mennist (Mennonite). She still loves Friesland and identifies herself with it, although for years she has lived I’ll sing for you! . . . Now evening comes; elsewhere, presently in Deventer, Overijsel. The late twilight broods o’er all. . . . years have brought bereavement in the loss of the last Within us chants love’s canticle, members of her immediate family. But with wisdom and our world—infinity! fortitude she has made the renunciation. —1914 Rixt/Bender The Thrush Thin silver threads about my fingers flow, and unto the dear form that bore me long ago When in the bright night my hands attend, devoted as in prayer. dreams recede for an instant, What joy—her deep and restful trusting in my care. your melody is a new dream to me. 1 hear her humming old-time melodies of childhood days, a long-obscured career The velvet sound in sharp relief again. Sadly I realize rising from your throat the secret groping from another sphere. climbs up to the sky in the silence of the summer night: The noble cup is full—full to the lip, tones soft and tender, and every hour an added gift, a tiny lease; flutings full and clear, tenderer still my ministering to her ease. in sweetest harmony. I bear the whole world on a fingertip. 1942-1952 Rixt/Westra When in the bright night dreams recede for an instant, your melody is a new dream Cypress By Lake Maggiore to me. Black and mighty stands the cypress, —1914 Rixt/Bender driven up from the rocky soil, tree of stone. Shining, colorful houses, playful and happy people— wreath round its foot— 0 They Who From The Stillness Come passed by generation after generation. O they who from the stillness come, But century after century who have been alone with God, the cypress stands what radiance from their faces wells, gigantic, what holy peace their heart indwells, torch of stone. what calm lies on their being! 3 942-1952 Rixt/Bender O they who from the stillness come, what warmth they shed abroad, How comforting their voices sound, their word how lucid though profound, Empty with inner peace agreeing. Now I’m but an empty bottle, O they who from the stillness come, the wine fermented out; the bourn of harmony! and nowhere have I found refilling— What peace lies in their eyes again, I stand idle in the day. what blessings for the hearts of men by strife and worry driven! Now I’m but an empty bottle: a sparkling, night-green mirror; O they who from the stillness come, but God and I poorness know— who have felt infinity, no one but God and I. all whom their soothing hands caress cast off their gloom, their weariness, Now I’m but an empty bottle. and look again to heaven. O that soft rain would come 1911-1921 Rixt/Westra and with its simple purity my hollowness would fill.

To ward The Last Now I’m but an empty bottle: God brand that in my soul! She who in all my life was e'er the nearest or of Thy living water none— and dearest refuge, where my safety lay, no drip shall be my dole. in all that changed my never failing stay, is now my charge, my child, my very dearest. 1942-1952 Rixt/Bender

38 MENNON1TE LIFE Negro Spiritnah without any fire, without any tear, we talk and weigh, we doubt and spell, smiling mildly of heaven and hell; but the negroes sing and the Lord comes down. The negroes sing, the Lord comes down. O throw me back into primitive life The negroes sing, the Lord comes down. to join my dark brothers. O, throw me back into primitive life Let me beat the drum to join my dark brothers. and shout my joy to the glory of God Let me beat the drum ’til jubilating unto Him I come. and shout my joy to the glory of God Rombom, rombom, rombom, bom. 'til jubilating unto Him I come. O God, throw me back into primitive life. Rombom, rombom, rombom, bom. O God, throw me back into primitive life. The negroes sing and the Lord comes down— August, 1957 Rixt the Lord from Whom we so often are astray, our Fortress strong that seems so far away; The original of this poem was published in the Frisian we people of stone, we men made of steel, literary review, De Tsjerne, October 1957. WAR and rumors of war

By Warren Kliewer

Though it was comforting to know that he had meaning, I thought. In another sense, however, his death never read my violence and passion, my complain­ had answered my question, though the answer was as ing about having done what was his, a soldier’s, daily enigmatic as my letter. His death suggested to me that business; I thought how much better it would have been my feelings, my felt conclusion, were right. Or at any if he rather than I had owed the letter. For he was dead rate, his death concluded the discussion, the disagree­ now, shot on guard duty while stationed just north of ment which we had argued, sometimes seriously, some­ Seoul. And though I knew as well as anyone else that times lightheartedly, ever since the war began. a man’s last statement may have no significance in itself, With the envelope still sealed, the letter lay on my a friend's last words to a friend must certainly have great desk from that September Saturday, the day when it was returned to me, until Wednesday of the next week, my day off, which I had planned to devote to Harold’s Copyright © 1961 by Warren Kliewer. Ail rights reserved. memory. And I had decided to celebrate not the death

JANUARY, 1962 39 of a friend but the life of a man, or at least that part "Really?” of his life which I had most recently known, in seeing "Haven't you ever been there?” Of course he knew again the things and places we had seen during the I hadn’t and he showed me on a road map how easy month-long furlough when he visited me in Topeka. it was to drive to the town, for it turned out that he All the places but one, the first which he had eagerly had planned the trip long before he had come to Topeka. i>one to. Hal was not a historian, for his knowledge of When we arrived, he walked slowly around all four history was a series of gaps and fragments. Yet I sides of the old capitol building, patting the rough yellow have known no one who felt history as he did, those limestone, peering into all of the windows. "That’s all parts of history which interested him. And so the first I wanted,” he said, "just to touch it.” place which he wanted to see in Topeka was the State It was Signal Oak, however, that excited him most, so Historical Society Library and Museum, and for the first much that he was almost entirely silent. He said only, week he had gone back every day. But on the day when "The irony! The irony!” and then, "It's become so I was following our old route again, I obviously could peaceful now. How beautiful!” And so Signal Oak not bear to go back to the Museum. was the first place I went to on the day which I had Harold always had a taste for what ordinary people set aside to commemorate Harold, turning south on would, I suppose, call remoteness. The very fact that he Highway 59 before I reached Lawrence and then north came to visit me in Kansas seemed to bear this out. I again just on the other side of Baldwin. There, be­ am sure that he almost approved of the war because it neath a tree which was too young to be the original was taking place in Korea rather than in New York or signal oak, I first opened the letter which I had written Paris, and approved of what I was doing to the extent to him. Whether it was because of the anxiety of that Kansas seemed outside the traffic of civilization. Yet re-reading my letter, the memory of Hal’s excitement Hal was seldom isolated, never unrelated so long as he when he first saw the four flat-topped hills jutting above could discover that something had happened in the spot the bluish mist of the valley, or what I now saw, the a hundred or fifty years ago or even two years ago, so valley dried, the leaves turning pale and not yet red, the that he imagined the action, the people, the time, the fields gray where the wheat had been harvested; what­ colors, the smells. And he even took sides. One day, ever the reason, my hands shook. Though the paper for example, when we were walking down Ninth Street was spread out on my knees, it was long before I could toward the Capitol, Hal suddenly stopped. His eyes begin reading. squinted as if he were thinking. "That must have been "Topeka, Kansas the corner,” he said, pointing ahead. July 18, 1951 "What must have?” "Dear Hal, "The Populists, the Populists,” he said excitedly. "I don't know which I hope for most—that you have "W ho?” heard or that you haven’t. One is as uncomfortable to "In the 1890’s. They had a battle. Barricaded them­ me as the other. Knowing that you may already know, selves in the Senate chamber. For three days. Con­ that you may have heard a distorted version, that you scripted the state militia.” may have been told the full story in all its ambiguity "Where? On this corner?” and you may have surmised the worst, not in order to "No, no, that one,” he said, pointing ahead again. condemn me but only to save yourself from disappoint­ "Don’t you know about them?” ment, expecting me to be . . . well, whatever the worst "Well, no.” could be . . . and still hoping for some way to vindicate "You live only six blocks away from here and don’t me—if you already know, then there is much that I know about the Populists' battle?” won’t have to tell. The details. But I wouldn’t be And as he described the battle, incredulous that I content in this case with telling you the facts. There are could keep from getting excited about it, he gradually so few facts, anyway. I would want to go on and inter­ shifted from talking about the Populists as "they” to pret, interpreting what I don’t really understand, analyz­ "we.” This was not the thing a scholar would have ing what only the policeman or the county attorney can done, of course. And if Hal had been a scholarly see clearly enough to analyze—if they would take the historian, he would have puzzled throughout the rest trouble to think about it, had the capacity to, had enough of the day, trying to remember where he had read about interest to. They, with the facts, don’t. I, without the the Populists. But he was interested only in smelling facts do. Without any facts but the one: the man died. the gunpowder and feeling the sweat run down his back. "Or you may not have heard about it at all, and so I It was the same impulse which prompted him to say may at this moment be breaking the news to you—or one day, "Let’s go to Lecompton.” have broken when I so bluntly said that he died: ’he,’ Having no idea whether Lecompton was a restaurant whoever he was. And if you didn’t already know, hadn’t or a movie or a used car dealer, I must have looked already heard by some route of gossip or other, then I puzzled, for Hal laughed and said, "It’s a town, one should feel obligated to explain everything from the of the first capitals of Kansas, the slavery capital.” very beginning, how I felt on the day before, what I

40 MENNONITE LIFE lmd for breakfast that morning, why I happened to be says when I raise her bed and she pats my hand, "My, on that street, on that corner at precisely the right time you conscientious objectors are such nice boys,” or some­ for the coincidence to occur . . . all the seemingly irrele­ thing to that effect. And Peggymac (or rather Miss vant details which gratuitously coalesced on the corner MacDowell, R.N., as her nameplate says) smiled indul­ of Tenth Street and Van Buren. gently. And flirted across the bedspread as we tucked You remember the corner, the smell of fresh bread Mrs. Johnson in. blowing across the street from the bakery, the streaked "All this was routine. One floor below, also following gray of the vulgarly ornamented granite building of the their routine, were similar nurses and aides tending a Historical Society Museum and Library, the equally man who was dying. And perhaps they were flirting streaked and gray State Printer’s office next to the Ma­ across his bed too, as I might have done were it not sonic Temple and across from the open lawn of the that my bullet may have been the cause of his death. My State Capitol. Why was I there? Certainly I had been bullet. My hospital. The irony was too heavy, too on the corner many times before, but only in the day­ surrealistic. And as I went about the ward that day, time. Never at night. And I almost wasn’t. I almost morbidly imagining my smile to be the grin of a death’s did keep on walking down Eighth, and turned onto the head, I mentally drafted a half dozen newspaper head­ diagonal sidewalk only when the thought flickered in lines, for naturally I had been interviewed. I finally my mind that I was getting into a rut. Maybe my pur­ settled on 'Cowardly CO Turns Murderer.’ You know pose was only to see Abraham Lincoln in the evening, what the paper said? 'Conchie’s Bravery Saves Police only to pat his bronze knee again, which I did. Yet I Officer.' I even had a phone call of congratulation don’t really know why I was on the corner. Nor why from a nurse, no less than the head nurse of the after­ the man turned that way, toward Tenth, when there’s noon shift, who added when she called at five-thirty, 'I a perfectly dark alley in the middle of the block. thought you might like to know that the man died.’ And That’s where I would have run. He didn’t. Nor why I went to work the next morning. he. . . . You see what I’m doing? Explaining, explain­ "All right, I’ll outline all the neat rationalizations that ing, loading and overloading with details, telling you you might be tempted to advance. I’m a hero in other what anyone half as wise as you would already know, people's eyes but not in my own. This, both of us will that the act was surrounded by dozens, hundreds of agree, is not much worse than being an unrecognized facts, all of which are irrelevant, none of which explain hero, and not much better than being neither hero nor anything. You don’t need to be told facts which you recognized. But the deception! The deception! De­ can quickly imagine. Nor do you need my attempt to ception of any kind, in the abstract— it is because of this soften the impact—you who know better, since you are you’ll cringe and squirm for me, though I naturally more imaginative than I, that we are all murderers, by would not ask you to grieve for the particular deception intent if not by deed—when I tell you that there’s a good I’m forced to perpetuate. Yet you're an imaginative chance that I may be a murderer.” person. Surely you can understand the guilty horror with I stopped reading. Below the hill lay the farmyard which I receive the praise that you would have felt which, in the spring and after a rain, had looked clean honored to receive.” in its washed bright colors, red and white. Then we From where I sat, as I turned the page of the letter, had seen the sheep walking to the barn in a long line, I looked at each of the four flat hills in turn, gazing the Iambs frolicking away from the flock until the ewes longest at Mount Oread which was just barely visible bleated them back. It so happened that I now saw the through the dust. The buildings of the University of flock walking back to the barn for water. The lambs Kansas were blurred, looking like no more than a pale were almost grown now, and the fleece of their shanks cloud bank rising above the slope. Because of the haze was green with flakes of manure. A hot breeze dragged and distance the hill reverted to its primeval appearance up the long slope of the hill, carrying along the sour —and partly, I suppose, because my eyes blurred the smell of the sheep yard and shaking the oak branches lines with tears as I remembered Harold’s first visit to so that a half dozen of last year’s acorns fell off. I picked Signal Oak. up one which seemed plump, but it was wormeaten and It had taken him only two days to find the place it crumbled between my fingers. which he had read about and which I after living in I resumed reading the old letter. Kansas for almost a year, had never heard of. "No, no, stop here. The obvious conclusion is the "This must be the place,” he had said, and then added, wrong one. I am still a pacifist. At seven the next "See how far you can look tov/ard the northeast.” His morning I went to work at the hospital as usual, read whole arm had swept along the horizon. "They stood as usual the Ward Seven report, wore my usual clean here. I’ll bet it was right here. A hundred years ago. starched white shirt and my stiff black bow tie, scurried From down in the valley they wouldn’t be able to see around with the breakfast trays at seven-thirty, gave three anything that was happening on the hill, but we’d be baths by nine-thirty and two enemas by eleven. And able to see everything they did from the time they crossed seventy-nine year old Mrs. Johnson said as she always over between that low hill and the grove of trees.”

JANUARY, 1962 41 "Who are ’they’?” I had asked. or mine. It slipped his mind, he said to me a few days "They? The guerillas, of course.” later when the corpse had already been cremated. The "The what?” end of the story, as far as they were concerned. There "Guerillas. Fighters. Soldiers. Those raiders from is now no way for me to find out anything. Missouri. They came over just before the war.” "Unless in time I can dredge up something more from "What are you talking about?” my memory. For several days I could remember nothing "Burned their houses. Killed the abolitionists. at all but the officer screaming 'Shoot. For God’s sake, "Oh, that war,” I had said. shoot.’ And of course I remembered or thought I "What did you think I was talking about?” remembered the gun going off. Or remembered feeling "I didn’t have the slightest idea.” the concussion in my arm. That was all. Yet about He had laughed. "You should have known what I three days after the accident (well, wasn’t it more acci­ meant. They don’t take slaves across the border now, dental than anything else?), after I had walked for three or four times over the same route, turning off only liquor. You should have known that. This is the place where the abolitionists had their lookout post and Eighth to the sidewalk that runs from corner to corner of the State Plouse grounds, through the parking lot watched for the slave-holding raiders. "And see,” he surrounding the Capitol, and straining all this time to had said pointing to the north, "you can almost see Lawrence from here. Here’s the place where we first recall the least fragment of an idea or feeling or image noticed the massacre of Lawrence when Quantrill’s men that had been running through my mind at the time of the arrest (not accident); and after I had even examined set fire to the town. And a rider left from here and the walls of the Museum in looking for a bullethole, notified John Brown who was camping at Osawatomie. examined the dirt beneath the shrubs in searching for And it was here we first got word of his counter raid any possible place where the bullet might have fallen if at Pottawatomie. They did, I mean, not we. I read it it missed; then I began to recall the police officer’s con­ somewhere.” straining me to help with the arrest. Or did I, after all I couldn’t help smiling when I remembered Hal’s that effort, only seem to remember it because I read it excitement. Perhaps I should have asked him whether he would have identified himself with the Confederacy in the papers? I'm suspicious. If I really remembered if he had been on the other side of the Missouri border. it, I should be able to recall the image of the police­ man’s face or his handing me the pistol or his saying And he probably would have answered, "Naturally,” that he authorized me to act in the capacity of a deputy; amazed at my foolish question. For Hal was capable of being both slave-holder and abolitionist, both William yet I remember only the abstract concept of constraint. I recall no more. The policeman said, 'Shoot, for God’s Quantrill and John Brown. I spread the next page of the letter across my knees. sake.’ I remember no more. "And you won’t be tempted—will you?—to tell me that "I didn’t faint, of course. I have forgotten, yes, but 1 did what was necessary, that I was in a situation over naturally I didn’t faint. I’m not a coward, not that kind which I had no control, that since all have failed who anyway. I could face blood and death and wounds and have tried to live by a standard higher than that of the the screams of the policeman as he lay writhing on the rest of the world, I may now take my place along with ground and clenching his teeth as the shaky left hand such other glorious failures as Socrates. Even if the took aim—I could face these things as well as anyone cases were not different, I should be sorry to hear such and better than most. I can remember how shocked I a clear and neat and tidy statement coming from you was when I began working here at the hospital and an who have always known that nothing in life is clear. aide told me how he had hardened himself to giving an And thus I warn you against the thing which you habitu­ enema at eleven and eating lunch with chocolate pudding ally avoid. Can I assume that you will also agree that at twelve, and how shocked I was to discover that I could there is no solution to the problem? do it too. I can remember the old man who died on the "These are the issues. I may have killed a man. It operating table when his mangled leg was being ampu­ may have been the policeman’s gun that killed him. tated, and how shocked I was to discover myself carrying We both fired at the same time. The man may actually the leg down to the ambulance without fear or nausea. have been guilty of the attempted rape. He may not. Nor was I horrified by even the fact of the death, aside The man may actually have had a criminal record as from the cause of death, of that supposed rapist whose thick as my fist. Fie may have been only another name­ name I never knew and whose face I can’t remember. I less vagrant. My killing him may have been not only believe that I can modestly assert my bravery, my physical self-defense but actual bravery in saving the policeman’s bravery. Nor was I afraid to assert my convictions. Not life. His death may have been, as I think it is, com­ moral cowardice. No. Under other circumstances I pletely unjustified by any standard, and certainly by might possibly have said to the policeman, 'Sir, the mine: I am a conscientious objector. I begged, literally pacifist has caught sight of an ethical standard which is begged, the desk sergeant to have the bullet examined superior to yours,’ and I might have calmly explained it, to determine whether it came from the policeman’s gun and possibly have even half-convinced him. Nor was I

42 MENNONITE LIFE shocked that in finding the policeman wounded rather than in a conversation over coffee, I discovered that the BOOKS pacifist ideal did not pragmatically work, that it was not a practical ethic, any more than I was shocked with your incontrovertible proof that pacifism cannot be applied to IN problems of world politics. I was not even inordinately shocked that the nameless man, whom I may have killed, suddenly leaped into my consciousness as an accuser. REVIEW Any man with a fragment of conscience would have ex­ pected this. Nor am I confused. But always granting in the past that it would not solve international prob­ lems, I still clung to the belief that pacifism was the Christianity and Communism Today by John C. Bennett. solution to an individual’s moral problems. Now I also New York: Association Press, 1961, 188 pp., S3.50. know that it did not solve this one. Yet I am a con­ This is a revision of a book which, since its first publi­ scientious objector still unwilling to believe that pacifism, cation in 1948, has been widely read and has received ideal not practical, is anything but true and valid.” general acceptance. No basic change in the point of And I had signed my name to the letter without a view is to be found in this present revision, however complimentary close. Now that I had finished reading more recent developments in the Communist world are it, I folded it and pushed it back into the envelope taken into account, so that it may speak to the immediate before I touched the corner with the match. "It is situation with more telling force. The point of view is finished,” I said to myself as I watched the black ashes simply stated in the very beginning. "This book is writ­ curl backwards from the flame. ten by one who believes that Communism as a faith and The abandoned limestone quarry was about a half as a system of thought is a compound of half-truth and mile back from the road, and it was there we had gone positive error, that Communism as a movement of power on the last day of Hal’s visit, and there we had finished is a threat to essential forms of personal and political what had been our month-long friendly argument. freedom, and that it is a responsibility of Christians to "Look at those rocks crumbling,” I remembered him resist its extension in the world.” There is an important saying as I stepped down the jagged and irregular steps. exposition of the exact nature of Communism, a clear I had posed on the edge of the quarry, one hand statement of the issues between Christianity and Commu­ pushed stiffly between the buttons of my shirt. "Here nism and an honest appraisal of the problems and diffi­ is the young Goethe,” I had said, "surveying the ruins culties in co-existence. In defining the policy of Chris­ of Rome.” tians in relation to Communism, he warns against the "There’s the solution to our argument,” Hal had said. hysterical forms of anti-Communism on the part of "Goethe could not revive ruined Rome any more than I economic conservatives. could raise these dry bones into a house any more than Unfortunately he is unable to extricate himself com­ you as a pacifist can refine war out of human nature.” pletely from a reliance on nuclear defenses and the role "No, say rather that this is a young man looking at of military force in this conflict of ideologies, but he an abandoned limestone quarry,” I had said, knowing that hastens to point out that the military role is secondary. he had won his point. One would also wish that his chapter, "The Policy of "Here’s a young butterfly communicating with his Christians in Relation to Communism” might have been ancestor,” Hal had said, pointing to a Monarch butterfly longer, for it is at this level that the challenge of Com­ that had settled on the rock and was crawling stiffly munism and the perils of false anti-Communism must- over a fossilized snail. "Perhaps even our ancestor. be met. Nevertheless this book will go a long way to Perhaps the butterfly would be a man if one of his restore a measure of sanity to an issue that is often ancestors had had the guts to fight his way out of the characterized by hysteria. mud.” "I suppose that one could find a moral lesson in the Bethel College Mennonite Church Russel/ L. Mast rock and the butterfly. Even the butterfly has reverence for what is nothing but the memory of life.” "I suppose.” I-Ial had laughed. This was the last Religious Drama time that I had heard him laugh before his departure on the following morning. "I suppose that one could Religions Drama 1 selected and introduced by Marvin say either of those things.” Halverson, 2 by E. Martin Browne, and 3 by Marvin By now the sun was setting, and a small cloud drifting Halverson. New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1957-59, toward the horizon darkened the quarry with its shadow. 410 pp., 317 pp., 317 pp., $1.45 each. I found the snail fossil, but there were no butterflies in The three-volume anthology, Religious Drama, is a the vicinity. compilation of selected high-quality plays which deal with

JANUARY, 1962 43 religious and moral issues, volumes 1 and 3 being lim­ and format of each edition. The editor, Georg Baring, ited to twentieth century works and volume 2 to medieval lists all the literature on each work and indicates where English plays. all the extant copies of Denck’s works are to be found Volume 2 is probably the least successful of the three, today. The genuineness of the second part of Von der for there is little point in reprinting plays which are wahren Liebe is clearly demonstrated on the basis of the already available in cheap editions. Furthermore, in evidence available at the time of writing. modernizing the medieval language so that the plays The second volume, edited by Walter Fellmann, will can be acted for a modern audience, the editor has pro­ be, for most of us, the most significant of the three, for duced highly inaccurate texts. it contains Denck’s theological treatises written between But the first and third volumes are more exciting. In January, 1525 and November, 1527. It is introduced by spite of the inclusion of the silly pseudo-mysticism of a short but helpful sketch of Denck’s life, extensively David by D. H. Lawrence, volume 1 can easily be for­ documented. Then follow the seven theological works given because it includes rare and brilliant works by W. including the confession before the Nürnberg Council I-I. Auden, Christopher Fry, Dorothy Sayers, and James and the so-called "Recantation” which Denck sent to Schevill. The last-named author, whose The Bloody Oecolampadius just before his death. 'Tenet dramatizes the trial of Roger Williams, is particu­ For a review of Denck’s main theological views, we larly interesting for his subtle treatment of the relation­ go to a short treatment by Walter Fellmann entitled ship of history to doctrine. "Der Theologische Gehalt der Schriften Dencks," pub­ Almost half of the third volume is devoted to modern lished in Die Leibhaftigkeit des Wortes, Furche Verlag, experimental one-act plays by James Broughton, Charles Hamburg, 1958. Because of its brevity, the treatment Williams, E. E. Cummings, and Par Lagerkvist. Though touches mainly on those points at which Denck diverged all the authors in this group are dramatically skillful, from Reformation theology. the most perceptive theological insights occur in the com­ The Nürnberg Confession already contains in embryo panion morality plays of Charles Williams, The House all the main elements of Denck’s theology, writes Fell- by the Stable and Grab and Grace. Concluding the vol­ mann. Two points are of major significance. Denck ume are two full-length plays: Billy Budd by Louis O. confessed that for him the final authority was the inner Coxe and Robert Chapman, and The Gospel Witch by voice. This voice stood for him above Scripture. This Lyon Phelps. The latter play, dealing with the Salem implies for Fellmann that Denck rejected the principle witch trials, must be compared with another play on the of sola scriptura. In his attitude to the sacraments, same subject, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which by Denck completely ignored their historic origin. This comparison seems wordy, stale, and conventional. For indicates the tenuous connection between Denck’s mystic the Phelps play is written with economical dramatic struc­ orientation and historic Christianity. In this respect ture and imaginative poetic language. Denck was a disciple of German mysticism, especially of Earlham College Warren Kliewer the German theology. Fellmann also sees a heavy de­ pendence on Thomas Müntzer in his mystic formulations. Denck attacks Luther in Was geredt sei das die Schrift sagt and insists on the freedom of the human will to Hans Denck respond to God’s working in him, rejecting vigorously any determinism. In the second half of Van der wah­ Hans Denck, Schriften. ren Liebe, Denck deals with practical matters of Ana­ 1. Teil. Bibliographie. Edited by Georg Baring, 1955, baptist church life. p. 6S. By and large Fellmann gives an accurate portrayal of 2. Teil. Religiöse Schriften. Edited by Walter Fell- the basic theological orientation of Denck. It is ques­ mann, 1956, p. 120. tionable, however, that Denck made as sharp a distinc­ 3. Teil. Exegetische Schriften, Gedichte und Briefe. tion between Scripture and the inner voice as Fellmann Edited by Walter Fellmann, I960, p. 148. Oueilen und indicates. For Denck, as for the rest of Anabaptism, Forschungen zur Refonnationsgeschichte. Herausgegeben the Bible without the life-giving power of the Spirit of vom Verein für Reformationsgeschichte, Band XXIV, God was like any other book. The quotation which published by C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh. Fellmann uses itself indicates that Denck is here speak­ With the appearance of the third part, the Täuferakten- ing about the Scripture as a mere book or letter. The Kommission has completed publication of the critical voice in him is the Spirit of God, the same Spirit who edition of the works of Hans Denck, spiritualizer and also brings the Word to life. Anabaptist. Fellmann is also critical of the traditional emphasis The first volume comprises a complete bibliography on Denck’s pacifistic and retiring nature. No doubt of all discoverable editions and reprints of Denck’s works. Denck had his shortcomings, but on this score Fellmann’s It is a meticulous piece of work, indicating in addition criticism is not convincing. He quotes him as saying to the publisher and place of publication, the type, size that men excuse themselves with Paul's words that every-

44 MENNONITE LIFE one remain in the calling to which he was summoned. I and II, the author traces in broad outlines the historical "Des sinns: Wenn der lierr einen im ehebruch beruffen, developments of the Anabaptist movement. He empha­ so müsst er darin beieiben" (II, 43, 20 ff.). That the sizes especially the beginnings in Zürich in 1525, and precise example cannot immediately be adduced to which then continues the story by means of several short biog­ Dcnck appears to refer is really beside the point. He raphies of notable early leaders, among them Felix says, "des sinns” or "for example.” That this is an Manz, George Blaurock, Michael Sattler, and Pilgram extreme example is true, but one need only think of Marpeck. He then traces the rise of Dutch Anabaptism Philip of Hesse’s bigamy which Luther, although reluc­ through Melchior Hoffman, dealing briefly with the tantly, countenanced, to show that such a distortion of kingdom of Münster, and then concerning himself at Luther's doctrine of vocation was not improbable. length with Menno Simons. It has been the reviewer’s contention that Denck indeed expressed regret for his participation in public ministry In the second part, the author deals with what he as can be seen from his "Recantation,” but that this did regards as the most notable theological views of the not involve his abandonment of Anabaptism. Fellmann Anabaptists under three headings: Anabaptists and the also takes this view when he says that Denck did not Bible, the Church and the Sacraments, and the Chris­ give up the basic elements of his Anabaptist theology. tian Life. He describes the Anabaptist attitude toward The third volume, also edited by Fellmann, contains the Scriptures, which were regarded as sole authority, the text of and commentary on the prophet Micah, with and their views of the ordinances and the Christian life. the text interspersed throughout the commentary in blocks The martyrology is a moving collection of stories of those convenient for comment. The text is the translation of who sealed their faith with their blood. Hätzer and Dcnck in what is known as the Wormser Tire feature that makes this book especially valuable Propheten and exhibits a freshness and force that would is the abundant use of quotations from Anabaptist writ­ be hard to match today. ings and records to document the author’s statements. Although there is no absolute certainty that this com­ Thus the reader is brought into the very presence of the mentary is Denck’s work, it does reflect Denck’s ideas sixteenth century Anabaptists themselves. It is a vol­ and trend of thought in many places, as for instance in ume that should be in every Mennonite church library the preface by Johannes Vielfeld (8:9 ff.), and at many and could be used for group study, although it is not places in the commentary (43:5 ff.; 46:26 ff.; 65:llff.; especially designed for such a purpose. The agreeable 83:13 ff.). If it is not by Denck, it does at least show, style and the simplicity of language should make the as Fellmann writes, how Denck’s spiritualism affected book widely useful. circles outside of Anabaptism. In addition to the com­ With all these commendable aspects, this reviewer mentary, there is Denck’s writing on baptism as found in was nevertheless disappointed with the book. Since it Johannes Bader’s book, Brüderliche Warnung vor dem is designed to serve the wider public in the dispelling netten abgöttischen Orden der Wiedertäufer, chapter of distorted views long current about Anabaptism, one three, which is of some importance in the question of would expect as accurate a presentation as it is possible Denck’s relationship to the Anabaptist movement. Then there are the three Latin poems and finally five extant to arrive at. There are several points at which Wen­ ger's treatment is deficient. letters of Denck, including his last to Oecolampadius of October, 1527. First, there is no clear recognition given to the vast Bethel College Walter Klaas sen complex of South German and Swiss Anabaptism. There is only one passing reference to the possibility of a sep­ arate movement (p. 31), and the Hutterite movement Reformation is in a limited sense so regarded. Men like Wolfgang Even Unto Death, by John C. Wenger, Richmond: John Brandhuber, Jakob Hu ter, Eitclhans Langenmantel, Leon­ Knox Press, 1961. 177 pp., S2.50. hard Schiemer, Hans Schlaffer, and Pilgram Marpeck This is an attractive little book that will render a real are indeed mentioned, but it is stated that they were all service among Christians in America. It offers to those Swiss Brethren (p. 105). The writings and statements unfamiliar with the Anabaptist-Mennonite heritage a of these men will show that they cannot be thus included moving presentation of the truly Christian and evan­ without some considerable qualification. And why, one gelical character of this sixteenth century Reformation may ask, are two of the most outstanding leaders of early movement. The book is free from polemics while at South German Anabaptism, Hans Denck and Hans Hut, the same time stating without apology what the author not even mentioned? These men are too prominent in regards as the theological and practical shortcomings of sixteenth century Anabaptism to be overlooked—Denck the Lutheran and Reformed positions. being an attractive Reformation personality and Hut a The book is divided into three main sections: the zealous missionary. historical, the doctrinal, and what may be called a short The chapter entitled "Anabaptists and the Bible” is martyrology. In the first section comprising chapters also incomplete, because it neglects to take into consid-

JANUARY, 1962 45 cradon Denck, Hut and Marpeck. All three of these The English Bible. By F. F. Bruce. New York: Oxford Uni­ men wrote extensively about the Bible, its function, and versity Press, 1961. 234 pp. S3.75. This book is a comprehensive study of the translations of the authority. Marpeck in particular has much to contribute English Bible from its earliest beginnings in the 7th century to at this point. Although he is mentioned, he does not the most recent, the New Testament translation of the New receive his due (p. 67). Denck and Hut and their fol­ English Bible of 1961. This study includes also the various private translations and versions in England and in the United lowers, Langenmantel, Schlaffer, Schiemer, and Huter, States. sought to qualify the sola scrip! nr a principle, not in order The book is written in an interesting, non-technical style. It is a fascinating story for any one who is interested in knowing to undermine its validity or to replace it with something how we got our English Bible. Citations from various trans­ else, but to clarify it. Is this the reason for their banish­ lations with comparisons, together with anecdotes that picture ment from the ranks of the "true" Anabaptists? Men- popular and scholarly reactions to new translations, add color and reality to his presentation. This book is a valuable nonites have long complained about being inaccurately addition to the library of any Bible student, church, or school. represented by non-Mennonite historians. Shall we fall Bethel College Henry A. Fast victim to the fault which they have now largely over­ come ? There is one other point which can give rise to mis­ A Revelation oj Jesus Christ. By J. B. Smith. Scottdale, Penn­ understanding. "In the early seventeenth century,” writes sylvania: Herald Press, c. 1961. 369 pp. $5.75. the author, "Anabaptism revived under the influence of This is a commentary on the book of Revelation by J. B. Smith, edited and published posthumously by J. Otis Yoder. such men of God as John Smyth and Thomas Helwys” Dr. Merrill C. Tenney of Wheaton College, who writes the (p. 112). Contact between Anabaptists and Baptists introduction, characterizes the book well in his preface. there certainly was, but it cannot be stated without quali­ Dr. Smith is a futurist and a premillenarian, holding that all the Book of Revelation beginning with the fourth chapter fication that the earlier gave rise to the latter. relates to the future period of judgment known as 'the These criticisms ought not to discourage anyone from great tribulation,’ which will be followed by the personal buying this book. The price is reasonable and the reader return of Christ and by the establishment of His kingdom. The introductory chapter of the book is a valuable feature will be repaid many times by reading and re-reading the in understanding the author’s viewpoint and in getting the over­ inspiring story of those who were faithful "even unto view of the study. The book is interesting to anyone who wants death.” to study Revelation from the viewpoint of a premillenarian. Bethel College Walter Klaassen Bethel College Henry A. Fast

Bible Education Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel (first four volumes) and Gerhard Friedrich. The Legal Status of the Public School Pupil. By Peter Frank Stuttgart: Kohhammer, 1957—. 6 volumes (to be completed) Bargen. Toronto, Canada: Macmillan, 1961. 172 pp. Ph.D. from 793-1,332 pages each. DM 60-84.—per volume. Dissertation. $4.00. The one truly monumental work in New Testament studies of The Church and Secular Education. By Lewis Bliss Whitte- the present century is the Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen more. Greenwich, Connecticut: Seabury Press, I960. 130 pp. Testament. This theological lexicon was inaugurated in 1933 S3-25. by Gerhard Kittel, professor of New Testament at Greifswald Many educators and business leaders have voiced their con­ (1921-1926) and Tiibingen (1626-1945), and edited by him cern about problems and crises in education. In the two volumes until his death in 1948. Since then the editor has been Gerhard mentioned above, a leading churchman and a superintendent of Friedrich. The work now comprises six volumes to the Greek public schools present two different problem areas and point to letter rho, with several more volumes yet to appear. ways of improving them. It has been the conviction of the editors that a lexicon of the Bargen finds that many educators in Canada do not have as Greek New Testament must include a history of the semantics thorough knowledge of school law as they should have. A good of words in their development. Thus, a word used in the New deal of litigation could be avoided if school boards and ad­ Testament must be understood in the light of its root meaning, ministrators would make more of an effort to conform meticu­ its use in secular Greek, classic and vernacular, and its use and lously to legal requirements. He further recommends that meaning in the religious connotations provided by the Sep- schools should obtain competent legal advice and that regula­ tuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament). The shades tions should be adopted which would contribute to the safety and nuances of meaning found in such a broad usage add to of the students. Much of what the author has to say would the understanding of a given word as used in the context of the apply to schools in the United States. The report is somewhat New Testament. technical and would not appeal to the general reader. This scholarly work, which includes such well-known contri­ butors as R. Bultmann, K. L. Schmidt, J. Jeremias, E. Stauffer, Whittemore looks to the church to help in correcting the H. Windisch, O. Michel, and Bo Reicke, has had a profound faults in the public school program. In some ways he feels influence upon New Testament studies, certainly in philology that the school has attempted to assume the responsibility’ for and semasiology. A number of the articles on key words, as the moral character of youth as well as some aspects of family love, kingdom, righteousness, Lord, have been translated into life, so that the pupil's complete day is dominated by the public English and published by Harpers. Recently other theological school. word books have appeared, which in a sense are miniature The church, Whittemore feels, should take the initiative and models of Kittel, including those edited by Alan Richardson and work out a curriculum enriched by the addition of history’, liter­ J. J. von Allmen. ature and philosophy. W ith such an approach, the church With the customary thoroughness of German scholarship, the would be in position to ask for a part of the week—perhaps articles on key words are usually lengthy, though comprehensive. a full day—in which it could take full charge of the student. For thorough study, there is no better single source. Not the Professional educators will probably not agree with Whitte­ least valuable is the bibliographical information with each of more’s proposal. In this day of debate regarding the proper the more important w'ords that are discussed. relationship of private and public education and the separation Bethel College Vernon Neufeld of church and state, the book makes a contribution. It bears re-

46 MENNONITE LIFE leading for those who would look for a starting point for change non-violence to claim the allegiance of large masses of men can­ and for improvement in American education. not be predicted. If such a social situation ever emerges, one Both of these books point up the fact that the education of suspects that theology may be among the last of the disciplines our young people is exceedingly complex. It is also a co-opera­ to adjust its teaching to the fact— let alone help produce it. tive enterprise. The school, the church and the community Then Christians may rediscover the Sermon on the Mount and must work together to produce an acceptable educational pro­ the meaning of discipleship. Ramsey’s book has numerous other gram or else the needs of children attending school in the facets which are timely and thought provoking but which cannot 1%0's will largely go unmet. be commented upon in a review of this length. BIufTton College Eldon W. Gräber Bethel College J. Lloyd Spaulding War and Death Penalty Das Problem der Todesstrafe. By Hans-Peter Alt. München: W'.ir and the Christian Conscience by Paul Ramsey. Durham,- Chr. Kaiser Verlag. 168 pp. DM 8.50. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1961, 331 pp., $6.00. The father of Alt was a chaplain in the München-Stadelheim Ramsey’s book bears the subtitle, "How Shall Modern W ar Be prison in Germany, where he gathered much material and ex­ Conducted Justly?” and this theme delineates the actual scope perience with prisoners awaiting their death. Out of these of his inquiry. The significance of the doctrine of the "just deep, difficult experiences grew the profound conviction that war” for moderns can be seen in Roland Bainton’s statement in capital punishment is not the will of God. Hans-Peter Alt has his discussion of the just war problem that "the position [of systematically gathered this into a challenging book. Augustine] continues to this day in all essentials to be the ethic The book deals more with the philosophical, theological, and of the Roman Catholic Church and of the major Protestant biblical aspects of capital punishment than most books do. Alt bodies.” (Roland H. Bainton. Christian Attitudes Toward War portrays the Old Testament concept of revenge (Blutrache) and and Peace. Nashville: Abingdon Press, i 960, p. 99.) The ap­ the many primitive ideas of punishment that Israel held to. plication of thermonuclear energy to military technology has In a similar way he spells out the contrasting New Testament caused discussion of certain theological issues involved by think­ teachings of love for even our enemies. Alt systematically in­ ers within Protestant groups and in the Roman Catholic Church. terprets the Scriptures and their view of capital punishment as In this book Ramsey develops one essential thesis—a contempo­ few writings do. This is the strength of this book. rary doctrine of "just war” would preclude waging war on non- Experiences with well-known problems and theories such as combatants, a tendency to which thermonuclear war is particu­ the necessity for deterrent, economic, and biological reasons and larly prone. the need for the safety of society from criminals are treated. Ramsey reviews a sector of the literature produced in the new Statistical comparisons are lacking, however, which have value discussion of issues surrounding a "just war." From this review as proof of given statements. Numerous other books can give comes his theological argument against waging war on non-com­ us more help on the sociological and psychological questions batants—a major pillar in his refurbishment of "just war” doc­ of capital punishment. The book deals considerably with law, trine. To achieve this objective, he takes the reader from Augus­ the application of law, traditions in the past, and a history of tine to Aquinas, to Luther and to modern theological writers the attitude of law to capital punishment. and military strategists. No less than Augustine, Ramsey believes that Christian love Newton, Kansas Leo Driedger requires, under certain conditions, obedience to the state in the use of violence to preserve the given social order of which the Christian finds himself a member. The Christian impulse cannot, Communism or has not as yet eliminated war as a social phenomenon. Hence, Communism and the Churches by Ralph Lord Roy. New as with Augustine, if the Christian ethic is to encompass more than the ethic of the sect, its only hope is to limit the impact York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, I960, 495 pp. S7.50. of war and make it more humane—particularly non-combatants This book needed to be written, and it needed to be written should be immune from extermination. Even "total” war is not now. With McCarthyism a little more than a memory, we arc- that total in his opinion. now in the midst of a new wave of Communist witch hunting. Certain comfort might flow from the argument were one able At a time when many feel that Russia is gaining ground in the to demonstrate an authentic impact of the Christian ethic on current cold war, there is a fresh outburst of hysteria, issuing the conduct of warfare. Doubtless the evidence is partial and in reckless and irresponsible charges of Communist loyalties and contradictory. Ramsey believes "In the tortuous course of human sympathies directed against ministers and church leaders. Quite civilization, the history of warfare has more often than not been understandably the people of the churches are shocked and not the history of just warfare, in the sense that weapons have been a little confused to read the statement by J. B. Matthews, for used—all of them, so far—more often than not within limits instance: "The largest single group supporting the Communist and controllably to serve some cause.” apparatus in the United States today is composed of Protestant However, Veale, in his forthright book of some years ago, clergymen.” Without knowing anything about J. B. Matthews, Advance to Barbarism (pp. 41 ff.'j, holds that Christian culture and without realizing that there is in fact no evidence to through the ages has had little effect on the actual conduct of support such a huge generalization, they become the victims war—save for the emergence of what he calls "civilized war­ of fear and suspicion. What, then, are the facts? fare," which to a degree has characterized the conduct of some Ralph Lord Roy has now completed an impressive piece of of the numerous "civil wars” of Western Europe. Even the fact-finding and solid investigation, which ought to set the "civilized warfare” of Europe has largely disappeared in the record straight. The very size of the book indicates something twentieth century in his judgment. of the thoroughness with which he carried out his task. The story begins with Bolshevik Revolution, when Marxism first Yet, does it not remain true that our theology remains that became a factor with which to be reckoned. The attitude and of Samuel who hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal? activities of church leaders and church bodies to Communism We build a theology around our ethnocentric tribal deity at are carefully followed through the intervening years as well as our unthinking worst. the Communist strategy with respect to the churches. But with Still others of us, indeed, moral men, find it incumbent to painstaking attention to detail he sifts through the evidence- resist evil as we understand it, because we are moral men. We bearing on the charges, similar to the charge made by J. B. take our lead from Christian insights, resist evil with violence Matthews which have been made against the clergy of America. because no other alternative appears open to us—we become It is not denied that there have been some churchmen who the conscientious soldier. Moral men must be true to their have been avowedly sympathetic with the more idealistic phases highest natures. Morality with this scope of content and in­ of Communist ideology, nor that they embraced its atheism or sight may not be adequate equipment for modern man. even became members of the party. Yet they did feel that Whether the religious spirit, fed by the springs of Christian Communism was making the best answer to the very great or any other religious insight, will ever produce a theology of problems that were facing the world. Without seeking either

JANUARY, 1962 47 to condone or to condemn, the facts regarding such men as The Care And Feeding Oj Ministers by Kathleen Neill Nyberg. Harry Ward, William Howard Mciish, and Jack R. McMichael New York: Abingdon Press, 141 pp. $2.50. are carefully examined. To say that there has been no Com­ In short, pithy sentences, the author makes observations from munist influence, even adverse and harmful influence on the her experiences as a minister's wife, for the purpose of helping churches and on churchmen, would certainly be untrue. the young minister’s wife understand her husband in relation It is part of the strength of this book that it does not dodge to his ministry. facts that are unpleasant. His conclusions after this monu- She is not as much concerned with the mechanics of being menutal effort, however, are both illuminating and reassuring. a minister’s wife as she is with the relationships in a parish, For example, he declares, "W hile Marxist Communism has emphasizing the minister’s needs and feelings. Not intending been an outspoken foe of religion, ironically, more damage to make a "question-answer” book, the author rather attempts to has perhaps been done to America's churches by the noisiest suggest a positive way in which a wife can share in the ministry antagonists of Communism.” "In their efforts to protect re­ and considers various ways in which her specific behavior can ligion from 'Red atheism,' too often they have directed their fire enhance the ministry. instead at the legitimate social concern of both Christianity and Cleverly and humorously, Mrs. Nyberg provides discussion on Judaism.” He declares further: "The notion that America's many aspects of a minister’s life—his home, children, time, churches and religious leaders are significantly influenced by friends, money, confidences, as a recipient and giver of gifts, Communists or Communist sympathizers is absurd.” Thus it his health and welfare, ego, ambition, and finally his mar­ finally turns out that only a very small number of clergyman riage. She states the most important way a wife can relate ever joined the Communist party within the past forty years. to her husband’s work is by supporting and understanding him. Most of these were Negroes who were impressed by the declared The wife’s role is one of acceptance and of understanding racial attitudes of Communism, but who knew next to nothing her husband’s individuality and the demands which his work at all about Marx or his ideas. He finds that the Communist makes upon him. Maintaining the home as one of relaxation influence in the churches has declined since World W ar II, so and a place of refuge, the wife quietly undergirds her husband. that today it is very near to the zero mark. Furthermore, had Encouragingly enough, in her conclusion, she states that a wife the churches been more alert to the social implications of the can fail in most of the mentioned categories, but still be a Christian ethic, there would have been even less occasion for good minister’s wife by thoroughly loving her husband. ministers to become active in so-called Communist front groups. Although written particularly for the young minister’s wife, Communism may therefore be thought of as a judgment upon a this easy-to-read book provides thoughtful stimulation for others church which too often was not "grieved at the affliction of as well. Joseph.” North Newton, Kansas Mrs. Robert J. Carlson Unfortunately the price and the size of this book may dis­ courage the would-be reader. Nevertheless, the information here gathered is of such critical importance in clearing up the confusion that surrounds this issue that one can almost regard Bibliographie zur Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes im it as "must” reading. At any rate, it will remind us that the XVI. Jahrhundert. By Philipp Wackernagel. Hildc-sheim: dangers of irresponsible and reckless anti-communism are no Georg Olms, 1961. 717 pp. DM 62.— less serious than the dangers of Communism itself. This book is a reprint of the edition published in 1S55 by Bethel College Mennonite Church Russell L. Mast Heyder and Zimmer in Frankfurt a. M., except for the dedi­ catory page in the earlier edition, which is omitted in the 1961 publication. Church and Hymns It is as complete a bibliography of hymnbooks and individual hymns published in the German languages in the sixteenth cen­ The Suburban Captivity of the Churches by Gibson Winter. tury for the Protestant Evangelical Church as I have found. The New York: Doubleday and Company, 1961. 216 pp. S3.50. section of the book containing the "foreword” to most of these It is the thesis of this book that as metropolitan Protestantism old hymnbooks is extremely valuable and informative. A close has moved out of the central city to the suburbs it has become study of this section will reveal something of the reason for the largely an upper middle-class church, ministering almost exclu­ hymnbook, often something of its contents, as well as some­ sively to white-collared people. Having become single class thing of the religious and theological thought of that time. A churches there was great emphasis on conformity and even uni­ person could wish for more information about the melodies to formity, a friendly hand clasp, a warm cup of coffee and some­ which the lyrics were sung, but such information must be sought thing for everyone to do. All this is in opposition to the early elsewhere. church which included rich and poor, bond and free, Gentile and This republication of WackernagcTs book is very opportune Jew. Moreover, this exodus from the central city to the sub­ and is to be highly recommended to the serious student of urbs left the central city to the left-wing fundamentalist groups hymnology. or unchurched entirely. Out of the situation there has emerged a new religious style, Bethel College Walter H. Hohmann or a new kind of church, which the author aptly terms the "organization church.” He is devastating in his criticism of the kind of church which has become nothing more than a "busy-nc-ss center,” where members do penance for their faults Deep Furrows by I. W. Moomaw. New York, New York: by sharing in the vast organizational work of the church. It is Agricultural Mission, Inc., 1957, 192 pp., $2.50. a modern form of salvation by works. Those who have had firsthand experience, are dedicated and The strength of the book lies in its diagnosis of what is deeply committed to a cause, can best enthuse others. I. M. the real sickness of the suburban church, and in its courageous Moomaw is such an individual when he comes to speak about recognition of the fact that a church to be true to its nature the rural community. He has had firsthand experience as a dare not be confined to a particular class, whether economic, missionary. He has traveled extensively and has taught sociolo­ racial or otherwise. To meet the needs of the entire metropolis gy at Manchester College and at present, is executive secretary of and all the classes of people in it, the church building can Agricultural Missions, Inc. no longer be regarded as the only unit in the life of the church. The book Deep Furrows is a rich imaginative and inspiring Rather by a "sector ministry" the church defines the whole volume suggesting methods and programs that are being carried metropolis and every sphere of life as its mission field. on by church groups in different parts of the world. It is kind Whether the proposal here given is the only answer or even of anthology of practical programs in Christian rehabilitation the best answer may be open to question. Nevertheless there of village life throughout the world. Mennonites will note with are insights throughout the entire book which are exceedingly interest the brief discussion by Robert Unruh on the problems relevant not only to suburban churches, but to churches wher­ of colonization in Paraguay. The volume is delightfully illus­ ever they are located. trated and attractively written. Bethel College Church Russell L. Mast Bethel College J. W . Fretz

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